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HISTORY OF LETTER-WRITING 



FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO 



THE FIFTH CENTURY 



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BY WILLIAM ROBERTS ESQ, 

BARRISTER AT LAW 




LONDON 
WILLIAM PICKERING 



MDCCcxLirr 



aoA* 



?N J ^ 



S^f^ov siKOva ttcctTOQ rr\q kavrs \pvxVQ ypa<p£i th]V f7rt<roX»;v Kai 
f«ri /xev fcai e% aXXow Xoyov ttclvtoq ideiv to rjOog rov ypatyovroQ, 
it, ovdsi-OQ ds ovt(x)q wq f7riTo\7/g. Demetr. Phal. nepi epfirjveiag. 



EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 

TO 

ALEXANDER RADCLYFFE SIDEBOTTOM, ESQ. 

OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER AT LAW. 



MY DEAR FRIEND AND BROTHER, 

The practice of dedicating a book to a friend 
has no sensible meaning in it, but that of doing a sort 
of public homage to talents and character, or giving 
utterance and expression to feelings of personal obliga- 
tion and respect. Both these motives are truly mine for 
inscribing this little work, which has been among the 
amusements of my declining age, to one with whom a 
long cherished connexion has matured my confidence 
in his candour and judgment; and in whose favour 
there is a large balance against me, in the commerce 
of kindness. 

We have sometimes conversed together on the topics 
of this publication, so that you will not be surprised 
that, at lengfh, the building, of which you saw, in a 
manner, the first stone laid, now presents itself to you, 
such as it is, a structure, if not of stately proportions, 
yet, it is hoped, of some solidity. 

I began with no determinate design of making a 
book, but have gathered resolution to lay it before the 
public, from a growing interest in the inquiry as it has 






IV EPISTLE DEDICATORY 



proceeded, and a prospect of making it conduce to in- j 
struction as well as entertainment. 

I cannot but think that what I have to offer on the 
subject under my hands, enriched by examples and 
specimens from histories and other sources, will present 
to the reader many lively traces of mental habit and 
character, in those distant ages, which impress us with 
a sentiment of tranquil delight, by the contrasts and 
analogies which they disclose, when brought into closer 
and more familiar comparison with our own times. 

I would premise that I have no immediate concern 
with such letters as are, in truth, only treatises or disqui- 
sitions in the form of letters ; though, where these bear a 
strong impression of character or manners, they are occa- 
sionally introduced. My chief concern is with letters as 
letters, where they are the channels of friendly inter- 
course, involving the free interchange of opinion, intel- 
ligence, or feelings ; and where the correspondence is 
personal and special. In this view of its nature and 
object, epistolary composition is not only a department 
of polite literature, but claims the attention of the philo- 
sopher, the antiquary, and the statesman. 

Thus considered, one cannot but wonder that the 
proper characteristics of letter- writing should have been 
so little the subject of early dissertation and cultiva- 
tion. It was reserved for the age of Cicero to mature 
both its theory and its practice. It is to him we are 
especially indebted for the display of its uses, in calling 
forth a description of talent, better fitted, perhaps, for 
embellishing than investigating truth, and more con- 
versant with the graces than with the severities of 
duty. 

Although as a distinct species of writing it has been 



EPISTLE DEDICATORY. V 

rarely commented upon by ancient critics ; yet if the De- 
metrius Phalereus, who, according to Cicero (Fin. v. 19, 
De Offic. 11), was the auditor of Theophrastus, was 
the real author of the treatise nepi epfXYiveiag, it would 
appear that the general character of good letter- writing 
was understood, at least by some, at a very early period ; 
but this work upon interpretation was, in all probability, 
the production of a comparatively recent period. I 
have taken a passage from it, however, for my m&tto, 
as it is descriptive of what a letter should be. 

Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny have given us incidentally 
some apposite and spirited remarks upon the proper 
style of an epistle ; and after them Philostratus, who 
lived under the first Severus, and died anno 244 of the 
Christian era, has written sensibly on the same subject ; 
and has named some of those who, in his judgment, 
have excelled most in this species of composition ; con- 
cerning whom something will be found in the course of 
this treatise. Libanius, who was the preceptor of the 
Emperor Julian, as also of Basil and Chrysostom, and 
Symmachus, who was raised to the consulship towards 
the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century, 
were both indefatigable letter-writers ; and the former, 
especially, has left us some of his opinions on the sub- 
ject. The Bt/3Xtov a^ecnroTOV irzpi eiri^aXriKov ^apaKTtjpog, 
of which many of the precepts have been preserved, 
does not, if it be the production of Libanius, as has been 
said, prove him to have cultivated with much success 
this field of criticism. 

We have next a letter of Gregory Nazianzen to his 
friend Nicobulus, which contains some pertinent obser- 
vations on the properties and rules of epistolary writing. 
From his time there is nothing that I know of, written 



VI EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 

professedly on this species of composition till Erasmus, 
who himself, next to Cicero, has left us the best patterns, 
in the Latin language, of the epistolary style, furnished 
his little treatise De Epistolis Conscribendis, written 
with a dry formality of detail and distribution ill adapted 
to the genius of the subject. 

In modern days, letter- writing has not been a copious 
theme with critics and commentators. Melmoth, in a 
note to one of Pliny's letters, has remarked, that " it is 
to be wondered we have so few writers in our own lan- 
guage who deserve to be pointed out as good letter- 
writers." After having named Sir William Temple, it 
would be difficult, he says, to add another. If his 
opinion be correct, the fact was the more particular, as 
Mr. Locke, the contemporary of Sir W. Temple, insists 
upon the importance of epistolary writing as a part of 
liberal education. " The writing of letters," says that 
great man, " enters so much into all the occasions of 
life, that no gentleman can avoid shewing himself in 
compositions of this kind. Occurrences will daily force 
him to make this use of his pen, which lays open his 
breeding, his sense, and his abilities to a severer exami- 
nation than any oral discourse." 

Dr. Johnson, in his Rambler, No. 152, after pre- 
mising that, among the numerous writers which our 
nation has produced, very few have endeavoured to 
distinguish themselves by the publication of letters, 
except such as were written in the discharge of public 
trusts, and during the transaction of great affairs, endea- 
vours to account for this deficiency in the literature 
of our own country, by imputing it to our contempt 
of trifles, and our sense of the dignity of the public. 
He seems to think that the department of familiar letter- 



EPISTLE DEDICATORY. Vll 

writing belongs only to narratives of our private affairs, 
complaints of absence, expressions of fondness, or decla- 
rations of fidelity ; and that these are topics which have 
no right to intrude upon the employment of the busy, 
or even the amusements of the gay. 

That as a specific branch of composition its standard 
is unjustly lowered by these views of its utility and 
importance will appear, I trust, very decidedly, to those 
who shall follow me through the various specimens 
produced in the course of this inquiry. Some of the 
great spirits of Greece and Rome will come forth to 
observation with a nearness and familiarity of approach 
which will shew to us, in their full dimensions, virtues 
which should make us ashamed of our own question- 
able superiority in many points of moral principle 
and practice, under all the advantages of a pure and 
perfect dispensation. 

The Rambler, indeed, acknowledges, in the paper 
above alluded to, that though the qualities of the epis- 
tolary style most frequently required, are ease and 
simplicity, an even flow of unlaboured diction, and an 
artless arrangement of obvious sentiments, yet we may 
relieve our minds from critical entanglements by deter- 
mining that a letter has no peculiarity but its form; 
and that nothing is to be refused admission which 
would be proper in any other method of treating the 
same subject ; — letters are written to the great and the 
mean, to the learned and the ignorant, at rest and in 
distress, in sport and in passion. Nothing can be more 
improper than ease and laxity of expression, when the 
importance of the subject impresses solicitude, or the 
dignity of the performance exacts reverence : — when 
the subject has no intrinsic dignity, it must necessarily 



V11I EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 

owe its attractions to artificial embellishments; and 
may catch at all advantages which the art of writing 
can supply." 

But whatever theories may be maintained respecting 
the uses and characteristics of letter-writing generally, 
experience must admit that the well furnished mind 
has found it, on the whole, one of the readiest ways of 
diffusing its communications ; and that, in fact, there 
is scarcely a province of imagination or intelligence 
that has not been indebted to this medium for imparting 
form and colour to sentiment, and warmth and variety 
to the tones of natural expression. 

To these recommendations of the art of letter- writing, 
no worse enemy has existed than affectation ; which, if 
it often refines it into dulness, no less frequently dis- 
figures it by an unscholarlike ease, and a rambling 
impertinence. 

After giving all due credit to the charms of what 
is called ease in the epistolary style, there seems to be 
no reason why ease should banish grace ; or why a man 
accustomed to write accurately and elegantly, may not 
carry this habit into his familiar correspondence with 
an accurate and elegant friend. No man's thoughts 
are the better for being immature ; or his expressions 
recommended by their slovenliness ; especially where 
this slovenliness is the fruit of dissembled pains. 

I certainly so far agree with the prevailing doctrine 
on this subject, as to think that letters must be natural, 
to be good for much. It is not necessary that they 
should be light or sententious, sprightly or severe, ram- 
bling or methodical. Their excellence rather consists 
in their affecting nothing, dissembling nothing, imi- 
tating nothing ; — in their fidelity to the feelings ; in 



EPISTLE DEDICATORY. IX 

their character of genuineness ; in a complexional rather 
than a conventional humour; in an eloquence of ex- 
pression, borrowing little from without, but sparkling 
and racy from the fountains of thought and sensibility. 
The play of a letter should be natural, its wit uncon- 
scious, and its vigour involuntary. In a real good letter 
there should be something vital, something in accord- 
ance with a healthy pulse of sentiment, something be- 
longing to the interior man, as he stands affected by 
passing events, or his own experiences and recollections. 
But letter-writing has its laws ; and it is one of its 
laws that nothing dried or laid up for use, should find 
admission ; its fruit should have upon it the bloom of 
our youngest thoughts, and a maiden dew should be 
upon its leaf. 

In the best letters we find a certain naive and arch use 
of language, in which images are made to play before 
the fancy of the reader, without the formality of decided 
similitudes or figures, giving a secret but a lively flow 
to the current of composition. To know the mystery 
of these happy combinations is the talent and tact of 
the initiated alone. These, however, are the secrets of 
familiar writing, and especially of letters, as they form 
a part of polite literature. They defy imitation, and 
refuse to be transplanted. They are delicacies which 
will not bear handling, — felicities which seem to come 
of themselves, while they mark the perfection of skill. 

I have troubled you with these few desultory obser- 
vations on the general qualities of letter-writing, not as 
being suggested or exemplified by the practice of the 
ancients, to which this treatise is confined, but as ex- 
hibiting something like a basis on which an estimate may 
be founded of the comparative merits of such examples, 



X EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 

as have come down to us from the pens of those who 
once carried on a familiar intellectual intercourse, under 
circumstances so different from those under which we 
live. The task I have assigned myself is limited to 
the products of what is properly considered the ancient 
world, carried down to the termination of the Roman 
empire in the west. It seems like literary justice to 
antiquity to produce whatever tends to bring it into 
fair comparison with our own times, in those arts espe- 
cially, in which their sober genius has supplied models, 
worthy of being studied by their posterity for their 
weight, correctness, and simplicity. 

In the letters of Cicero, all that the Latin language 
could produce of effect and impression by its peculiar 
and native idiom, and the secret graces which are locked 
up in the nationality of its allusions and associations, 
was, doubtless, in full exercise; and much of this 
power and compass must be dormant, to us at least, at 
the distance at which we stand from the times in which 
they were written. But still the scholar who can read 
undelighted these productions of that extraordinary 
man, must allow me to doubt his capability of deriving 
pleasure from the most interesting of all spectacles — 
the full expansion of a greatly gifted mind, acting 
against a strong pressure from without, and with all its 
capacities in requisition and conflict. 

To the delicacy, affluence, and idiomatic vigour of 
the Greek language, all who are well acquainted with 
it, are ready to bear testimony ; but yet much of its 
peculiar beauty and effect must be lost to the modern 
reader, however conversant he may be with its general 
structure and combinations. 

The nearest approach we can make to these inherent 



EPISTLE DEDICATORY. XI 

and treasured properties of a language, in which its 
felicities principally consist, is through the medium of 
its epistolary specimens ; and by this opinion I have 
been induced to enter upon an undertaking, which, as 
it has been a source of much amusement and interest 
to myself, I venture to intrude upon the public under 
the shelter of your greatly respected name and accre- 
ditation. 

To the letters of the wisest and most accomplished 
heathens I have added pretty copious specimens from 
the fathers of the evangelical church, of the fourth and 
fifth centuries ; in whose epistolary intercourse there 
will be found matter of the gravest import, and the 
fullest exhibition of a class of men, whose habits of 
thought and expression were framed after a model 
entirely different from that which furnished the standard 
of heathen morality : and the present is, perhaps, a 
juncture in which that portion of this work will be 
found especially interesting. 

I have had no intention to embark in any contro- 
versy ; but sometimes, in following out facts, I may have 
offended some patrons or professors of particular opi- 
nions on theological subjects. If such has been my 
misfortune, I shall soon be made sensible of my temerity 
by the party-wrath of critical vengeance. The whole 
weight of any such displeasure I shall be ready to 
encounter, if I am cheered and strengthened by your 
valuable approbation of my honesty and consistency. 

In the necessary prosecution of my subject I have been 
carried through the comfortless regions of pagan dark- 
ness to the border illumined by the rays of the orient 
Gospel. Beyond that verge I have proceeded, I hope, 
with self-distrust and circumspection ; my concern being 



Xll EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 

with facts and history, rather than with doctrine and 
disputation. In this Eden of our Second Adam there 
are divers rivers, some flowing in channels wrought 
by human hands, to which I have always been afraid 
of committing myself, not knowing where they might 
land me. To one only river I restrict myself, in which 
I am assured there is no peril ; — that full river which 
emanates from the fountains of inspiration, and which 
needs no supply from tributary streams. If I can pre- 
sume to be acquainted with your sentiments, I should 
say they are of the same sober cast. 

You will probably shrink from the perusal of so 
bulky a volume ; but the profession must not grudge 
a few vacant hours to you, who have sacrificed so many 
of the delights of the scholar to the duties of the 
lawyer. 

I am, ever yours, with true affection, 

WILLIAM ROBERTS. 



Shalford, Surrey, 
January, 1843. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Page 

Origin and primitive History of Letter-writing ... 1 

Particulars. 
Attossa, how far to be regarded as the In ven tress of Correspondence 

by Letter 1 

Writing and Correspondence in Homer's Time 3 

Instances in the Sacred Scriptures 5 



CHAPTER II. 

Of the Mechanism and Materials of Letter-writing . . 9 

Particulars. 
Primitive Practice and Expedients. The Methods in use among the 

Chinese, Peruvians, and Mexicans 10 

Hebrew Alphabet. Pictorial origin 11 

Materials in early use. Story of Belerophontes 12 

Tables of Stone, Metal, Wood, and Wax, Leaves, Bark, Skins, 

&c 1 3 et seq. 

Writing Tablets, Port-folios, and Portable Cases 16 

Story of the Emperor Commod us 17 

Egyptian Papyrus. Its Manufacture 19 et seq. 

Pompeii and Herculaneum 25 

Pergamenum. Kings of Pergamus 26 

Paper from Linen Rags 27 



CHAPTER III. 
Of Pens, Pencils, and Ink 28 

Particulars. 

The Style used by the Ancients 28 

Ink, Inkstands, Reeds, Blotting Paper 29 

Pugillares, Lead Pencils, Pens 33 et seq. 



XIV TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Page 

Of the Forms of Ancient Letters 35 

Particulars. 

Rolls, Litteree, Codicilli, Signum or Seal 36 

Superscriptions, Salutations, and Addresses. Subscriptions and 

Conclusions. Cyphers and Secret Letters 37 

Story of Menecrates 38 



CHAPTER V. 

Conveyance by Posts 39 

Particulars. 
Dispatches, Royal and Public Letters and Messages, Persian Con- 
veyances 39 

Mogul Empire 41 

Instances from Herodotus, Harpagus, Artabazus, Histiseus ... 43 

The Spartan Scytale 44 

Roman Conveyances 45 

German and French Posts 47 

CHAPTER VL 

Letters attributed to Phalaris 48 

Particulars. 

Sir W. Temple's Opinion of the Letters of Phalaris 48 

First publication of the Letters by the Hon. Charles Boyle ... 49 

Wotton's Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning .... 50 

Dr. Bentley's Motives for writing his first Dissertation .... 50 

Dr. Bentley's second Dissertation 51 

Dr. Bentley's Objections principally grounded on Chronological 

Inconsistencies 52 

Anachronisms 53 

Stesichorus, Polyclitus, Timonactus. The Towns of Zancle and 
Messana. Taurominium and Naxos. The Words Tragedy, Phi- 
losophy. The Dialect of the Epistles. The Use of Gold and the 

Theraclean Cups. The Bull of Phalaris 53—61 

Letter to Lacritus 61 

Letters to Eurythia, Paurola 62 — 63 

To Pythagoras, to Orsilochus 65—6 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV 

CHAPTER VII. 

Page 

Pythagorean Correspondence 67 

Particulars. 

Pythagoras to Hiero 67 

Same to Anaximenes . . • 68 

Lysis to Hipparchus 69 

Pythagorean College. Golden Verses 69 

Theano to Eubula; to Nicostrata, and Callistona. Melissa to 

Cleareta 71—79 

Pythagorean Order, and Method of Institution . 80 

Sentences of Sextus the Pythagorean 82 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Spurious Greek Epistles 84 

Particulars. 
Letters of Themistocles, Socrates, Xenophon, Aristippus, Euripides 

84—88 
Alciphron 88 — 90 

CHAPTER IX. 
Genuine Heathen Greek Epistles 91 

Particulars. 

Plato to the Kindred and Associates of Dion 91 

Isocrates to Alexander 99 

Same to the Sons of Jason 100 

Amasis to Polycrates ; Oroetes to the same 104 

Pausanias to the King of Persia 105 

Xerxes, King of Persia, to Pausanias 106 

Letter of Nicias, the Athenian Commander, to the Athenian Govern- 
ment 106—110 

Philip, King of Macedon, to Aristotle 110 

Alexander the Great to Darius Ill — 113 

CHAPTER X. 
Early Letter- writing among the Romans 114 

Particulars. 

Fabricius to King Pyrrhus 115 

Cornelia to Caius Gracchus 116 



XVI TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Page 

Sylla to Mithridates 117 

Catiline to Catulus . . . . ■. 117 

Cicero's View of Letter-writing 119 

Marcus Brutus's Letters ..121 



CHAPTER XI. 

Letters to Cicero from his Friends 123 

Particulars. 

General Character of these Letters 124 

Marcus Cato to Cicero 126 

Julius Caesar to Cicero 128 

Pompey to Cicero. Remarks on the Conduct and Measures of 

Pompey 129 

Caesar to Cicero. Characters of Pompey and Caesar contrasted . 130 

Cicero to Caesar. Censures on that Letter 132 

Caesar to Cicero 133 

Ccelius to Cicero. Remarks on that Letter 134 — 136 

Interview between Cicero and Caesar 137 

Servius Sulpicius to Cicero on the Death of his Daughter . . . 138 
Memoir of Servius Sulpicius and of Marcus Marcellus . . 141 — 143 

M. Marcellus to Cicero 143 

S. Sulpicius to Cicero, relating the Circumstances of the Assassina- 
tion of Marcellus 144 — 145 

Some Account of Matius and his Letter to Cicero . . . 146 — 150 
Brutus and Cicero contrasted, and Letter of the latter to Atticus . 151 

Cicero's Explanation of his Conduct, to Brutus 155 

Publius Valerius Messala Corvinus 161 

Brutus to Cicero, exhorting him to firmness and patriotic consistency 161 
Merits of that Letter 166 



CHAPTER XII. 

Letters of Cicero to his Friends, 167 

Particulars. 

General Character of Cicero's Letters 167etseq. 

Cicero's celebrated Letter to Lucceius 170 

Cicero to Marcus Marius. Character and Habits of the latter . . 175 

Character of Curio 179 

Letters from Cicero to Curio 180 — 182 

Cicero to Titius, on the Loss of his Son 188 

Cicero to Papirius Paetus 183 

Cicero to M. Curius ... 191 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV11 

Page 

Cicero to Poetus, on Letter-writing 1 92 

Character of Trebonius 193 

Trebonius's Opinion of Cicero's Son 194 

Character of Cicero's Letters to Atticus 197 

Letter to the same, explanatory of Cicero's Conduct . . . . 198 
To the same, with some Account of his literary Works .... 201 

Cicero to Varro, on their literary Intercourse 208 

Account of Varro 210 

Cicero to Atticus, describing Caesar's Visit to him 214 

Cicero's last Days 215 — 218 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Letters of Augustus Cjesar 219 

Particulars. 

Aug. Caesar to Caius his Grandson . . . . 219 

From the same to Tiberius 220 

Same to Livia 221 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Letters of Seneca 224 

Particulars. 

Seneca to Lucilius, on the Shortness of Life ....... 225 

To the same, on Elocution ..,...* 228 

To the same, on Philosophical Equanimity . 231 

To the same, describing his disagreeable Lodging amidst the Tumult 

of the City, and the Remedy of such Inconveniences . . . . 233 
To the same, setting forth his Love and Admiration of Men deserv- 
edly called Great 238 

To the same, on the Mind's Independence of Place 240 

To the same, on Elevation of Mind, and the Aspirations of the Soul 243 
Reflections on the Speculations and Conceptions of Deity enter- 
tained by the Ancient Philosophers, compared with Christian 

Knowledge and Wisdom 248 

To the same, on Reading, and the Choice of Books 253 

To the same, on the Soul of Man and its Capacities .... 255 

Reflections on the Philosophy and Opinions of Seneca .... 257 

Deaths of Seneca, and Socrates 260 — 265 



XV111 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XV. 

Page 

Letters of the Younger Pliny 265 

Particulars. 

General Character of his Letters 266 

Pliny to Minutius Fundanus, on his Manner of passing his Time at 

Rome, compared with his Occupations in the Country . . . 267 
Pliny to Catilius Severus, on the Illness of Aristo, his Patience 

under it, and his general Character 268 

On Pliny's Approval of Suicide 270 

Remarks on the different Sentiments entertained, respecting old 

Age, by the Ancients 272 

Pliny to Calvisius, describing the bland and virtuous old Age of 

Spurinna 274 

Remarks on the above Portrait 276 

To Caninius, describing the self-inflicted Death of Silius Italicus . 278 

Observations on Roman Villas 280 

To Apollinaris, containing the Description of Pliny's Tuscan Villa, 

with a Note on the Disposition of Pleasure Grounds .... 284 
To Marcellinus, on the Death of the young Daughter of his Friend 

Fundanus 295 

To Paulinus, on the Sickness and Character of his (Pliny's) Freed- 

man Zosimus 297 

To Calphurnia his Wife 299 

To Tacitus, giving him an Account of the Death of the Elder Pliny, 

occasioned by the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius 300 

To Priscus, with an Account of the Illness of Fannia, the Wife of 

Helvidius, and Daughter of Thraseas Paetus and Arria, with a 

Note containing a Memoir of that Family 307 

To Paternus, on the Deaths of two of his (Pliny's) Household, and 

his Manner of treating his Servants 311 

To Sabinianus, recommending him to pardon and receive again his 

run -away Servant, compared with St. Paul's Letter to Philemon, 

and also to one on the same Subject of Isidore of Pelusium 312 — 318 
To Fabatus, his Wife's Grandfather, on his ornamenting the Town 

of Comum, Pliny's Birth-place 319 

To Caninius, with the Story of the tame Dolphin 320 

To Geminius, on the dutiful Conduct of a young Man to his Grand- 
mother, and his other Virtues 324 

To Marcellinus, on the Death of Junius Avitus, and his excellent 

Character 327 

To Maximus, on his setting out as Proconsul to his Province of 

Achaia 329 

To the Emperor Trajan, on the Conduct of the Christians in Bithynia 333 
The Emperor's Answer 335 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XIX 
CHAPTER XVI. 

Page 

Letter- writing from the Time of Pliny to the Time of 

Philostratus 337 

Particulars. 

Letters of Apollonius Tyaneus, with an Account of that extraordinary 

Character 337—349 

Musonius to Pancratida, on the Education of her Children . . . 350 

Letters of the Emperor Hadrian 353 

To his Mother 354 

From the same to Miniitius Fundanus (Proconsul) respecting the 

Treatment of the Christians 355 

From the same to Servianus, on the Egyptian Character . . . 356 

Letters of Marcus Aurelius 358 — 364 

Letters of the Emperor Septimius Severus 365 

Letters of Philostratus 366 

Philostratus to Julia Augusta, with a Note on the Writings of the 

Sophists 369 

Letters of some of the later Sophists 37.2—382 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Letter-writing from the Time of Philostratus to the 

Time of Libanius 383 

Particulars. 
Letter of the third Gordian to Misithius, his Father-in-law, and 

Prsefect 383 

From the third Gordian to the Senate, with an Account of the Suc- 
cess of his Persian Campaign 385 

From the Emperor Gallienus to Verrianus 386 

From the Emperor Valerian 387 

From the Emperor Aurelian 388 

Letters between Aurelian and Zenobia 391 

Account of Longinus 392 

Letters of Probus and Carus, Emperors 394 

Letters of the Emperor Julian, with an Account of his Life and Reign 395 

Julian to the Community of Jews, with Observations on the same 412 

Julian's Epistle Forbidding the Christians to teach polite Literature 417 

Julian to the People of Bostra, complaining of the Galileans . . 421 

Observations on the last Letter 423 

Account of the Life and Writings of Libanius 425 

Earthquake in Nicomedia 426 

Letters between Libanius and Julian ......... 428 



XX TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Page 
Basil, Account of him 430 

Letters between Basil and Libanius 432 — 437 

Basil to Gregory Nazianzen, with an Account of his Retreat in the 

Solitudes of Caesarea 439 

Gregory of Nazianzus, Particulars respecting him 447 

His Letter to Nicobulus, on Epistolary Writing ...... 451 

Gregory to Celeusius, with the Fable of the Swans and the 

Swallows 453 

His humorous Letter on the Retreat of Basil 457 

Serious Letter from the same to the same, on the same subject . . 461 

Gregory to Basil, on their worldly Promotion 463 

Gregory Nazianzen to Gregory Nyssen, a consolatory Letter on the 

Death of Basil 465 

From the same to the same, on the Return of the latter to his secular 

Studies 469 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Letter-writing from the Time of Libanius to the Time 

of Sidonius Apollinaris 469 

Particulars. 

Some Account of John, Chrysostom 469 

Letter of Chrysostom to Olympias, Deaconess, describing his Jour- 
ney to the Place of his exile 475 

From the same to the same, in praise of her Christian Constancy . 482 
His other Letters from Cucusus, concluded with a Letter to his 

Sister 487—495 

Remarks on his Letters 495 

Synesius, his Life, with an Account of Hypatia 497 

His Letter to his Brother, on his intended elevation to the Bishopric 

ofPtolemais 499 

Various Letters from Synesius 505 — 510 

Character of Synesius 511 

Isidore of Pelusium, Account of him 515 

His Style and Manner of Writing 516 

His Letter to Theodosius, Bishop, on the true Ornaments of a 

Church 518 

His J^etters to various Persons 520 — 528 

Short Notices of Cyprian and Cyril * 529 

Ambrose, the Particulars of his Life 531 

Remarks on the Wonders wrought by the Bones of Protasius and 
Gervasius, and on the Legends and Miracles of the fourth 

Century 538 

Letters between Ambrose and the Emperor Gratian 542 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXI 

Page 
From Ambrose to his Sister, Marcellina, on the Removal of the 

Relics of Protasius and Gervasius 545 

Letter of Ambrose, containing his Maxims of Moral Conduct . . 554 

To Bellicius, on the Cure of a Man Blind from his Birth . . . 557 

Other Letters of Ambrose 559 — 565 

Final Triumph of Christianity over Heathen Idolatry throughout 

Imperial Rome 565 

Symmachus and Ausonius, their Letters 570 — 576 

Letter from the Emperor Theodosius to Ausonius 576 

Paulinus, of Nola, Account of him, and of his separation from 

Ausonius and secular Communications 579 

Parting Letter from Paulinus to Ausonius 582 

Letter of Paulinus to Augustin 585 

From Paulinus to Alipius 589 

Augustin to Valentin 606 

Augustin to Jerom, on his Translation of the Old Testament from 

the Septuagint, and from the Hebrew original 610 

Letter from Jerom in answer to Augustin, respecting St. Paul's 

Reproof of St. Peter, and the Charge of " Officiosum Menda- 

cium," and concerning the Translation of the Old Testament, 

and the Plant mentioned in Jonah 619 

Conciliatory Letter from Augustin to Jerom, with his Expressions 

of Sorrow for the Quarrel between Jerom and Ruffinus . . . 641 
From Jerom to Augustin, alluding to the Dissentience among the 

Inmates of his Monastery 649 

From the same to the same, alluding to their Differences . . . 650 

From Augustin to Jerom, a conciliatory Letter on the same Subject 65 1 
Extinction of the Roman Empire in the West, and the State of 

Roman Literature at this Period 676 — 679 

Letter from Sidonius Apollinaris to Domitius, giving an Account of 

his Villa called Avitacum 679 

From the same to Agricola, describing the Person and Habits of 

Theodoric, King of the Visigoths 687 

From Sidonius to Donidius, describing his Visit to the Villas of 

Ferreolus and Apollinaris 690 

Character of Sidonius 695 

Fathers of the Church, a few Remarks upon their Writings, Princi- 

ciples, and Opinions . 696 



ERRATA. 



age 19, for " fiitXiog," read " j3i€kiov." 

29, for " Augustan period," read " Augustan history." 
213, 1. 12 from the bottom, for " of," read " by." 
251, for " yEvrjfia," in note, read " yivvrffxa." 
612, for " Officium," in the heading of the letter from Jerom, read 
" Officiosum." 

There are many more errors, of greater or less importance, which the 
benevolent reader is requested to allow for, and correct. 



ANCIENT CORRESPONDENCE 



CHAPTER I. 

ORIGIN AND PRIMITIVE HISTORY OF LETTER-WRITING. 

In tracing the history and origin of letter-writing, we shall in 
vain look for any certain date. The honour of the invention 
has been given to Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus ; married suc- 
cessively to Cambyses and Darius Hystaspes, by which latter 
prince she became the mother of Xerxes. The authority for 
this supposed fact is the testimony of Hellanicus, a general 
historian of the dynasties and catastrophes of ancient states, 
including that of the Persians, whose works are lost, and who 
seems to have lived till about the beginning of the Peloponne- 
sian war. x The fact as recorded by Hellanicus is preserved 
byTatian and Clemens Alexandrinus. Tatian, in his celebrated 
Oration against the Greeks, a work which* has come down to 
us, contends that none of those institutions of which the Greeks 
were so boastful, had their origin with them, but were all in- 
vented by the Barbarians : 2 and, according to this author, it 
was said by Hellanicus, that a Persian Queen, whose name 
was Atossa, first composed epistles ; which statement is copied 
by Clemens Alexandrinus. 3 

It answered Bentley's purpose to construe gvvtciggziv into 
the sense of etievpaiv, it being his object to shew that Atossa, 

1 Aul. Gell. xv. 23. 

2 'On ovSev tojv siriTr]dev[jiarijJV oiq EWrjvtg KaWioiri^ovrai, EWrjviKOv' 
aWa £/c fiaptaptov rr\v evpetriv box^koq. Quod nihil eorum quibus Gratci 
gloriantur studiorum apud ipsos natum sed omnia a Barbaris inventa sunt. 

3 Strom, i. 132. Upo)rr]v s7ri<jro\ctQ avi'va^at Arocrcrav rrfv Utpawv (3a<ri~ 
Xtvcravav <pii<Jiv 'EWavi/coc;. 

B 



* ORIGIN AND PRIMITIVE 

who, he contends, was posterior to Phalaris by two genera- 
tions, was the inventress of letter-writing; but it may be 
reasonably doubted whether Hellanicus intended by the 
word (TwracTdEiv to ascribe any thing more to Atossa than 
the introduction of a method of so disposing the material 
used for the purpose as to connect the matter of the corres- 
pondence in a regular continuity and more orderly sequence. 
Hellanicus, as quoted, does not use ypa^eiv or (rvyypcKpEiv, 
but gwtclgctuv, which Dodwell 4 thinks is answered by the 
Latin word " compaginare." " Hoc itaque Atossse inven- 
tum, ut tabellas epistolares, quae singular paginae appella- 
bantur, in unum corpus et fasciculum compaginare, quo com- 
modius a Tabellariis deportarentur, qui ab his epistolarum 
tabellis nomen acceperunt, prima ilia docuerit Atossa." 

Tatian, in conformity with his purpose, which was to 
take from the Greeks the credit they assumed to them- 
selves as inventors, and to give it to other nations whom 
they called Barbarians, was disposed to ascribe the whole 
merit of inventing the communication by letters to the Persian 
Queen ; and Clemens Alexandrinus has confirmed the state- 
ment by references to several philosophers apparently of the 
Peripatetic school, who, in their several books concerning 
inventions, have asserted the same thing. But very different 
views may be entertained of what properly constitutes an 
invention : and perhaps in a qualified sense every signal 
addition and improvement may deserve that appellation. 

What was precisely the subject-matter of Atossa's inven- 
tion we are not told, nor is anything recorded to lead to the 
conclusion that she was the inventress of any new material ; 
but if she found out the way of committing the communica- 
tions between persons at a distance from each other to* paper, 
whether composed of the interior bark of trees, or of the 
Egyptian papyrus, or of any other flexible or membranous 



4 Exercitationes duae : prima de setate Phalaridis ; Secunda de aetate 
Pythagorae Philosophi. Ab Henrico Dodwello, A.M. Dubliniensi, 1704, in 
Pnrf. 



H [STORY OF LETTER- WRITING. d 

substance, and making it into a roll or volume, to be sent by 
some carrier, she may, according to the sense in which 
Pliny understands the word epistle, be duly accredited as the 
inventress of epistolary correspondence. Pliny considered as 
epistles those letters only which were inscribed on paper, 
which he places in opposition to the ancient codicilli, 5 the 
term he gives to the writings that Bellerophontes carried from 
Trcetus to Jobates, of which we read in the sixth book of 
Homer's Iliad. 6 Zenobius 7 and others say that Bellero- 
phontes carried epistles ; but the words used by the great poet 
are iriva% tttvk.toq, with which the Latin words tabellce or 
pugillares would seem rather to correspond than litterae or 
epistolaB ; and Pliny, while he distinguishes pugillares and 
codicilli from epistolce, assumes, on the authority of the above 
.passage in Homer, pugillarium usumfuisse etiam ante Trojana 
tempora. It had been said, indeed, in a history written by 
Licinius Mucianus, who lived in the reign of Vespasian, that, 
when he was governor of Lycia, he saw and read in a certain 
temple there an epistle from Sarpedon 8 written on paper ; but 
Pliny, who quotes the passage from Mucianus, distrusts the 
account: " Since," says he, "even in Homer's time, and 
therefore, long after Sarpedon, the part of Egypt which pro- 
duces paper was nothing but sea, being afterwards thrown 
up by the Nile." 

Whether epistolary writing, properly so called, was an art 
existing in Homer's days, may perhaps be open to much 
doubt. We have nothing for it, except the story of the 

5 The epistola was always sent to the absent. Codicilli were given to those 
who were present, as well as sent to the absent, as were also the libelli. The 
messages from the emperors of Rome to the senate were called epistola?, 
or libelli, being folded up in the form of a little book. 

6 . Hopsv d" bye (rrjfiara \vypa, 
rpaipag fv irivaizi tttvkto) 6vfio<j)9opa 7ro\Xa. 

Horn. II. I. 168. 

7 Zenob. p. 50. 

8 The name of one of the heroes who assisted Priam in the Trojan war, 
killed by Patroclus, who, some say, was a king of Lycia. — Horn. Iliad xvi. 



4 ORIGIN AND PRIMITIVE 

folded tablet, given by Proetus to Bellerophontes to deliver to 
Jobates, conveying the deadly instructions. 9 

The Author of the "Essay on the original Genius and 
Writings of Homer" seems to think that writing was alto- 
gether unknown in Homer's time. Heyne himself, and Wolf, 
in the Prolegomena to his edition of Homer, are of opinion 
that neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey were ever reduced to 
writing by the Bard himself. It is, however, admitted by 
both of these last-mentioned critics, that writing was in use in 
Greece before the time of Homer ; if not in ordinary inter- 
course, certainly for memorials and inscriptions. The pro- 
bability is, that the permanent inscription of words upon 
paper for the purpose of epistolary communication was not 

9 The story is this : — Bellerophontes, the son of Glaucus, having slain his 
brother, fled to Proetus, king of Argus. Here he was accused, by the wife of 
the king, of conduct injurious to the husband's honour, in revenge, it is said, of 
her own slighted passion. Proetus sent him away to his father-in-law, Jobates, 
King of Lycia, with a letter, the purport of which was to persuade Jobates to 
put the offender to death. The dangerous enterprises on which he was em- 
ployed, and the triumphant issue of them, are among the marvellous matters of 
fabulous history. We have a story of a similar kind, of Pausanias, by 
Thucydides, who relates of that faithless, though valiant Spartan, that he en- 
gaged a man, with whom he had been intimate, to carry letters from him to 
Artabazus, the Persian commander, but that this messenger, observing that 
those who had formerly been employed upon this errand never came back, 
had his suspicions awakened, and having previously possessed himself of a 
seal like that of Pausanias, opened the letter, and found, as he had suspected, 
that he was therein set down to be murdered for greater secrecy. The letter 
was laid before the Ephori, and afforded that complete evidence of the treason 
for which the general was condemned and put to death. The annals of ambi- 
tion and treason have furnished several similar stories, but one of modern date 
is very remarkable. It is of the Italian Giangiacomo, who, having hired himself 
to the persons then at the head of the government of Milan, to dispatch one 
of their opponents of the Visconti family, after perpetrating the murder, was 
sent by those who plotted it with a letter to the Castellan of the castle of Mus, 
on the lake of Como, in which he was desired to put the bearer to death. 
Giangiacomo, conceiving a suspicion of the contents of the letter, opened it, 
and found what awaited him. He took his resolution. With a few trusty 
companions, he gained an entrance into the castle, and succeeded in getting 
and maintaining possession of it. He was the brother of Pope Pius the 
Fourth, whose name was Gianangelo, before his elevation to the papal throne. 



HISTORY OF LETTER-WRITING. O 

the usage even in matters appertaining to government, and 
the transmission of public orders and instructions, till the 
time of the Empress Atossa, about which period the institu- 
tion of posts, which are generally admitted to be of Persian 
origin, was brought into special use. 

The story of Bellerophontes may not be true ; but we may 
safely presume that, as Homer put it into the mouth of one of 
his heroes without noting the occurrence as new or particular, 
it was a way of communication known in his time ; nor is 
it any stretch of conjecture to suppose that persons at a dis- 
tance from each other would, at a very early period, supply 
the want of immediate intercourse by some form of epistolary 
correspondence, when the occasion occurred, and a bearer that 
couldbe confided in was at hand. 10 

The age of Homer, taking it at a mean distance between 
the lowest and highest probable antiquity assigned to it by 
the ancient chronologers, may be regarded as preceding the 
Christian sera by about 1000 years, synchronizing with the 
time of Solomon. 11 But the Holy Scriptures afford instances 
of letter-writing in some form or other at a period consider- 
ably before the days of Solomon. David wrote a letter to Joab, 
and sent it by the hand of Uriati, 12 and he wrote in the letter, 
saying, &c. ; and about 140 years afterwards, Jezebel wrote 
letters in Ahab's name, 13 and sealed them with his seal, and 
sent the letters unto the elders, and to the nobles that were 
in the city, dwelling with Naboth, and she wrote in the 
letters, saying, &c. The king of Syria wrote a letter 14 to the 

10 " Quis enim quaeso," says Dodwell, " vir prudens sententiam suam nun- 
ciorum verbis efferendam crederit cum invento literarum usu, sua posset verba 
ipsa transmittere V Exercit. duce in Praf. 

11 In the opinion of Theopompus and others, Homer lived 500 years after 
the siege of Troy; 684 years B. C. Clem. Alex. Strom. 1. i. s. 21. p. 389. 
Tatian, S. 49. According to 'Plutarch, some affirmed that Homer lived at the 
time of the Trojan war, 1184 years B. C. Plut. in v. Horn. 44. So that if 
we take a mean between these two extremes, the age of Homer must stand at 
about 100 years after that of Solomon. 

12 2 Sam. xi. 14, 15. ,3 1 Kings, xxi. 8, 9. 
14 2 Kings, v. 5, 6, 7; ch. x. 1, 2, 6, 7. 



D ORIGIX AND PRIMITIVE 

king of Israel, and therewith sent Naaman his servant, to be 
cured of his leprosy : " And it came to pass, when the king of 
Israel had read the letter, that he rent his clothes :" which 
transaction was about 900 years before the Christian sera; 
and about 20 years after we are told that Jehu wrote letters, 
and sent them to Samaria ; and a second time, other letters of 
a different import, which last were cruelly obeyed. We have 
the threatening letter of the king of Assyria to Hezekiah, set 
forth in the Second Book of Kings, 15 as also the compli- 
mentary letter from Berodach-Baladan to the same king of 
Judah after his sickness; 16 who afterwards appears himself to 
have written letters 17 to the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, 
to summon them to Jerusalem. 

Cyrus, after publishing his decree, giving liberty to the Jews 
to return to their own country, and rebuild the house of the 
Lord at Jerusalem, wrote letters recommendatory to the 
governors of several provinces, to assist the Jews in their 
undertaking, one of which Josephus has recorded as being- 
directed to the governors of Syria, and commencing with the 
regular epistolary salutation : " Cyrus the king, to Sysina, 
and Sarabasan, sendeth greeting." 18 

While the children of the* captivity were rebuilding their 
temple, (522 years B. C.) there was a frequent correspon- 
dence by letters between their adversaries and Artaxerxes 
king of Persia. 19 And supposing that the invention (in any 
modified sense) of letter-writing on paper, or what may 
answer to the idea conveyed by that term, is in any measure 
attributable to the daughter of Cyrus, this was a transaction 
quite of course, and agreeable to the general practice. 

Concerning the age of Phalaris, the famous tyrant of Agri- 
gentum, very different opinions have prevailed. Bentley, as 
we have seen, supposes him to have died Olymp. lvii. 3, and 

15 2 Kings, xix. 14. 'e Ibid. ch. xx. 12. 

17 2 Chron. xxx. 1,6. '» Jewish Antiq. lib. xi. c. i. 

19 Ezra, iv. 8, 11, 18; see also, Nehem. ii. 8, 9; ch. vi. 17, 19. Esth. 
iii. 13 ; ch. viii, 5 ; ch. ix. 25. Isaiah, xxxvii. 14; ch. xxxix. 1. Jerem. 
xxix. 1, 25, 29. 



HISTORY OF LETTER-WRITING. / 

maintains Atossa to have lived after him 70 years; which 
respective dates, if correct, and assuming Atossa to have 
been the inventress of regular correspondence by letter, 
afforded him an argument, on which perhaps he laid too 
much stress, against the reality of the letters ascribed to the 
tyrant, as being too early for the stage at which the art had 
then arrived. 

The controversy respecting the genuineness of these epistles 
has long ago ceased to exist, having been extinguished by 
the dissertation of Dr. Bentley on the subject, — a perform- 
ance which, in addition to the direct accomplishment of its 
particular purpose, has done more perhaps for the elucidation 
of ancient literature than any work of the same extent. 

A better opportunity will occur for a few comments upon 
the dissertation, and upon the letters themselves. At present 
I shall take it as proved that the letters are supposititious ; 
the work probably of some sophist of a school of rhetoric 
or grammar at Alexandria, who, at the distance of eight or 
nine centuries from the death of the tyrant, presumed upon 
the obscure traces of him preserved by history or tradition, 
to attach to his name the credit of a series of letters which, 
while they were considered by Bentley, who contended for 
their spuriousness, to be very childish and insipid, were 
thought by Sir William Temple, who received them as 
genuine, " to have more race and spirit, more force of wit 
and genius, than any others he had ever seen, either ancient 
or modern:" both which statements appear to be greatly 
overcharged ; as is usually the case when facts take the dif- 
ferent colours reflected upon them by controversy and strong 
party opinion. 

The instances of communication by letter-writing to which 
I have been alluding, are plainly no specimens of that use of 
the invention which makes it the medium of free thought and 
intelligence, or even the simple vehicle of domestic intercourse. 
They are either formal announcements of authoritative man- 
dates and despatches, or at best only the conveyances of 
certain information to be the motive to some act or under- 



8 HISTORY OF LETTER-WRITING. 

taking, or to determine or direct some course of proceeding. 
We have no examples of what can properly be called familiar 
letters before the time of Cicero, whose correspondence may 
be justly regarded as among the most precious remains of 
ancient literature which have survived to us. The numerous 
epistles, indeed, which have been given to us in the Greek 
language, as coming from the pens of persons of illustrious 
name in history, might be opposed to this observation, if these 
productions could be received as genuine ; but nearly all men 
of critical acquaintance with the subject have rejected them, 
or by far the greater part of them, as frauds attempted to be 
imposed upon the world with little merit for the most part 
in the execution, and still less of principle in the plan and 
purpose. 



CHAPTER II. 

OF THE MECHANISM AND MATERIALS OF 
LETTER-WRITING. 

In treating of the social intercourse which is carried on by 
epistolary correspondence, I may perhaps be allowed to in- 
vite attention to the progress of the mechanical expedients 
connected with its exercise and improvement. I do not mean 
to trouble the reader with a dissertation on the origin of the 
alphabetical characters, or to enter at large into the com- 
mencement and progress of the art of writing, in its relation 
to the general topic of language, but to treat of it only as it 
is instrumentally and partially connected with the subject 
under consideration. 

The primitive practice of planting groves and setting up 
heaps or pillars of stones to recall and perpetuate the memory 
of past events manifests, if not the total ignorance of the art 
of writing, at least its rude and imperfect state, and rare 
occurrence in the first stages of society. Numerous and 
various have been the practices by which the nations of early 
antiquity have endeavoured to preserve their traditions and 
memorials. Not only the expedients above alluded to, but 
songs, orally transmitted, and festivals and institutions of 
different kinds, have been made to answer the same purpose. 
Small cords, sometimes variously coloured and regularly 
knotted, have been used as registers of events and transac- 
tions by some countries, as by the Chinese in the ancient 
times before the reign of Fo-hi, and by the Peruvians at a 
later period, (known among them by the name of Quipos ;) 
and pieces of wood numerically marked or notched have been 
adopted for similar ends. A nearer approach to writing was 
the representative method of exhibiting the things them- 



10 MECHANISM AND MATERIALS 

selves to the eye, or using them as emblems for painting the 
thoughts ; at which stage of the art men seemed long to 
have halted. The Chinese characters disclose in their for- 
mation their derivation from this source. From these imita- 
tive methods it was a great stride to the use and application 
of alphabetical letters; and between the hieroglyphical method, 
which presented a duplication of ideas and a complex asso- 
ciation of words and objects, to the simple signification of 
articulate sounds by conventional signs or characters, the 
procedure must needs have been very slow ; till at length the 
art emerged from the historical and representative state to 
the expression of sounds by the combination of visible marks, 
without meaning in themselves ; and it is probable, that one 
of the intermediate steps was the syllabic method of writing, 
that is, the use of certain characters to express complete 
sounds, or what two or three letters are now employed to 
enunciate. With most nations the different modes above 
mentioned were probably long in practice together ; and, after 
all it must be admitted, that the pictorial method has been 
a most expressive medium for the communication of ideas. 
When Cortes had his first interview with the Mexican chiefs, 
it may be questioned whether any words, had writing, as well 
as the language of their invaders been known to them, could 
have conveyed to their sovereign so intelligible an account of 
the power and intentions of their visitors, as the delineations 
on their white cotton cloths of ships, and horses, and artillery. 1 
In our own days the pictorial style may be said to be in use 
in our heraldic bearings, which are the records of those 

1 Gerard Vossius, in his treatise De Quatuor Artibus Popularibus, after many- 
remarks on the surprising discovery of the art of writing, a phenomenon which 
has lost its hold upon our admiration only by its frequency and familiarity, 
tells a pleasant story to shew at what an elevation it stands above the vulgar 
apprehension of an uncultivated mind. In the country of the Brazils, a slave 
was sent by his master to a nobleman, his friend, with a basket of figs as a 
present, accompanied with a letter. Tempted by the excellence of the fruit, 
the bearer of the present devoured a large part of it. The plunder was imme- 
diately detected by means of the letter, and the delinquent found it of no avail 
to deny the fact against the evidence of the letter, though utterly unable to 



OF LETTER- WRITING. 1 1 

achievements by which certain families first obtained dis- 
tinction. 

The Hebrew alphabet retains no positive indications of a 
pictorial origin. In their present forms they are probably not 
of very ancient date. Still there seems good reason to sup- 
pose that they owe their birth to an early pictorial form from 
which they have gradually departed. The first letter, Aleph, 
signifies an ox, and the picture of the head and horns of that 
beast may have led to the present form of that letter. The 
zigzag line is a natural symbol for water, as imitative of 
undulation, and the letter m, which is called Mem, signi- 
fies water ; the waving line is also the symbol of Aquarius in 
the zodiac. It is probable the letters of the Hebrew alphabet 
may have, more than those of other languages, preserved 
their forms, as they have been used on important occasions as 
notes and distinctions. The Psalms and other portions of 
Scripture are sometimes divided into parts, each beginning in 
succession with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and 
thus there is very high authority for the number and order 
of the letters, and enough to shew an early regard to their 
identicalness of form. The Psalms xxv. cxi. cxii. and cxix. 
are instances of this order. In the cxix. especially, each letter 
of the alphabet, from Aleph to Thau, inclusively, begins eight 
stanzas, or (Tricot, making in all eight times twenty-two, or 
one hundred and twenty-six stanzas ; and in the third chapter 
of the Lamentations, every three stanzas begin with the same 
letter. The pictorial origin will account for the resemblance 
in their primary forms between the alphabets of so many 

comprehend the way in which the communication had been made. Some 
time after he was despatched again with some figs, and a letter to the same 
person. Being again overcome by the temptation, and being aware of the 
tattling propensity of the letter, he was determined it should have no know- 
ledge of his roguery ; so putting it underneath a large stone, he sat upon it and 
regaled himself with his share of the figs. After this was done, he proceeded 
on his errand, and delivered the remainder of the figs and the letter. He was 
again accused, and with greater confidence than before denied the charge, till a 
smart castigation convinced him that he had not escaped the scrutiny of the 
letter. 



12 MECHANISM AND MATERIALS 

languages. The varieties are attributable to causes too nu- 
merous and obvious to bear or need enumeration. Accident, 
caprice, taste, the material written upon, the instrument used 
for making the strokes and marks, would be always producing 
changes in the form and substance of the letters, till arrested 
by the art of printing, which would naturally tend to identify 
the forms of letters, and lay the pen or the reed under 
greater restrictions. 

The materials used in writing have been of very various 
sorts. In early times they were of so rude a description as 
necessarily to render the application of the invention very 
operose and wearisome. But if we wonder at the slow pro- 
gress of improvement in the mechanism and apparatus of 
an art of such urgency in the affairs of social life, we must 
at the same time admire the refinement and perfection to 
which some of the languages of primitive antiquity were 
matured and polished, under such discouraging difficulties in 
the process of committing them to writing. The language of 
Homer is as graceful as it is vigorous and comprehensive ; and 
yet in the public and private transactions which his poems 
record, how little occurs which supposes writing to have 
been in ordinary use. The story of Proetus, Jobates, and 
Bellerophontes, in the sixth book of the Iliad, to which I 
have already alluded, is the only instance in which mention 
is made by the great poet of the application of the art of 
writing ; and it is observable that what Bellerophontes is re- 
presented as carrying to Jobates are by the poet called ar\\xara, 
which may, at least, be as well translated by " signs" or 
" marks," as by " written characters," unless the word ypaipag 
be taken only to imply alphabetical writing, which seems to 
be too confined an interpretation of the word, regard being 
had to its primary signification. But if considering that it 
was a folded tablet, and contained particular instructions, we 
adopt the conclusion that the instrument was in writing, we 
feel it to be the more remarkable that such rare mention 
should have been made in the Iliad of an art of such great 
importance, amidst so many events and transactions which 



OF LETTER-WRITING. 13 

seemed to furnish occasion for its use. Judicial decisions, 
civil compacts, stipulations and promises, rights of inherit- 
ance, obligations of kindred, conditions of combats, suspen- 
sions of active hostility, and even treaties of peace, do not 
appear to have been reduced to writing. Witnesses, symbols, 
sacrifices, and libations, were in most cases relied upon as 
the memorials and ratifications of the most important and 
solemn transactions, registered only in the consciences of the 
parties. All the commissions and instructions respecting the 
dispositions of the war appear to have been verbal ; and when 
the appointment of the person to answer the challenge of 
Hector was committed to chance, the marks, and not the 
written names of the heroes, were cast into the helmet of 
Agamemnon. 1 

It was on hard materials that the art displayed its first 
efforts. According to Pliny, the Babylonians wrote their 
astronomical observations on bricks. Tables of stone are 
among the most ancient monuments of Chinese literature. 2 
Thus also the Decalogue and Joshua's copy of the Law were 
on stone. Metals used for the same purpose scarcely yield 
to stone in antiquity. In Job, allusion is made to writing on 
lead with a style of iron. And plates of copper seem to have 
been adopted, for similar use, in times almost equally distant. 3 
Our Saxon ancestors are said to have employed the bark of 
the beech tree, called boc, whence, some are of opinion, comes 
the word book. Tablets of wood, covered with wax, may be 

1 Iliad, lib. vii. v. 175 et seq. 

2 But it seems that the Chinese, from very early times, have had among 
them a manufacture of silk paper. And we read that about the middle of the 
seventh century, this laborious and ingenious people brought to Samarcand 
this manufacture. It is said that, when the Saracens took possession of that 
city, they brought away the art, and soon afterwards, as a substitute for silk, 
made use of cotton, of which paper was made at Mecca at the commence- 
ment of the eighth century. The new process followed the Saracens into 
Spain, and in the twelfth century a flourishing manufactory of paper was 
established in Valentia, where flax, an article which grew abundantly in that 
province, was introduced in the place of cotton, not so easy to be procured. 

3 Plin. lib. xxxiv. sect. 21 ; and see Ovid. Me.tam. lib. i. v. 91, 92. 



14 MECHANISM AND MATERIALS 

supposed to have come into adoption at a somewhat later 
period, and to have taken the place of materials of less easy 
adaptation. 4 

As we have mention made in Homer of a folded tablet, 
and in Job of writing a book ; ambiguous as those terms 
may be considered, there is ground, amidst much ambiguity, 
for conjecturing that, almost in the cradle of civilization, other 
materials of a more pliable and portable nature than those 
just above enumerated, were occasionally made use of, rude 
enough in their first adoption, but such as in process of time 
were wrought and compressed into forms more adapted to 
common purposes. The leaves of plants, 5 and the inner coat- 
ing of trees, must have greatly multiplied the uses and 
advantages of writing, as that noble invention became pro- 
gressively more and more pressed into the service of mental 
intercourse. The probability is, that leaves, bark, and even 
skins and thin pieces of metal, were all, on occasions, in use, 
long before they were manufactured into a condition to an- 
swer the purposes of familiar interchange. One material 
may be supposed to have gained a preference in comparison 
with others, as it happened to be improved by'superior modes 
of preparing it. We find Themistocles writing an epistle in 
stone to be conveyed to the Ionians, 6 while tables of wood 



4 Plin. lib. xxxiv. sect. 21. Isidor. Orig. lib. vi. c. 12. 

5 That leaves were in common use, among other substances, in early ages, 
appears from many indications. The Cumean Sibyl is said to have written 
her prophecies upon leaves. Under the words EK<pv\\o<popr](Tai and 
Eic<pvXko(popEiv in Suidas, we are told by him that the votes expelling a 
Senator from his rank and office were taken on leaves. " Senatores nomina 
eorum in foliis oleae scripta in echinos demittebant ; argumentis et rationibus 
latse sententiae simul adscriptis." Avti rijg ipr/Qov (pvWoig -i-KKjr\\iaivi rr\v 
avTov yvwfirtv eica<TTog, icai tXcytro tsto fK<j>v\\o<popr)(Tai. The Hindoos ap- 
pear to have made use of leaves in writing some centuries ago ; and it is said 
that books made of leaves are sometimes even now found in use in parts of 
India, and in the island of Ceylon. In the Eastern world the trees produce 
leaves well adapted, by their size and smoothness, for the above purpose. 

6 Herod. Uran. 22. 



OF LETTER- WRITING. 15 

covered with wax were in familiar use, as we learn from the 
following story : — 

When Xerxes had determined to lead his army against 
Greece, Demaratus, who was then at Susa, as soon as he 
was informed of it, was desirous of transmitting the intel- 
ligence to the Lacedemonians ; but having no other means 
of making the communication, and being very apprehensive 
of discovery, made use of the following device. Taking a 
writing tablet (SsXnov Sitttv^ov Xa€wv), he scraped the wax 
from the surface, and wrote on the wood the intention of 
Xerxes; and having so done he covered the tablet again with 
wax. Being brought in this state to Lacedemon, that people 
were puzzled at first to make out what was meant by it, until 
a young lady, the daughter of Cleomenes, removed the per- 
plexity, by directing them to scrape off the wax ; which was 
accordingly done, and the writing was discovered, with the 
purport of which all Greece was soon made acquainted. 8 

As the practice proceeded, and occasions multiplied, the 
materials for writing would gradually assume forms more 
convenient and more conducive to despatch. Thus the in- 
scription of letters on the interior bark of trees, especially 
of the linden tree, came to be the prevalent method, as re- 
quiring less room, and affording a better opportunity of being 
folded together, than materials of a grosser texture would 
admit of; which seems to have been the stage at which the 
art had arrived during the reigns of Cyrus, the Persian 
potentate, and his immediate successors ; with whom also 
the method of conveying letters, by regular relays of bearers, 
appears to have originated. 

iElian, in his " Various Histories," relates, that when the 
king of Persia made a journey, it was his usage to carry 
with him, in order to prevent ennui (Iva jurj a\vr)), a tablet 
made of the linden bark (<j)i\vpiov), the work of his royal 
hands, and a knife to scrape and polish it. 9 The Note sub- 



8 Herod. Polym. 239. 

9 ^lian. Var. Hist. lib. xiv. c. 12. 



1G MECHANISM AND MATERIALS 

joined by the Latin translator and commentator, 10 is worthy 
of attention, who explains tyiXvptov to mean a thin tablet, 
so called because it was made from the linden tree, by the 
Greeks called <f>i\vpa, whence came the Trivatcec <pi\vpivoi, 
tabellae tiliacese ; adding, that the membrane between the 
exterior bark and the wood afforded a substance similar to 
the papyrus. 11 

The writing tablets composed of this inner coating of the 
linden, or lime tree, were rendered capable of being folded up 
into so small a compass as to take the name of pugillares, 
implying the capacity of being contained within the grasp of 
the hand or fist, and carried easily about the person for 
occasional use. And the convenience of this method in its 
improved state was such, that we find it in the palace of 
Imperial Rome. 12 It forms, indeed, a feature in an occurrence 

10 Perizonius. 

11 It would seem from many passages in the Greek and Latin classics, 
that these tablets were not always waxed over, but often only polished by 
attrition, so as to admit of letters being easily engraved or scratched upon the 
surface. And for this purpose the box-wood seems to have been much used. 
Hakai yap 7rors TViva^iv, tjtoi <javt<Ji,Kcu ravraig sk ttv^ov juaXiora, ra ypa/u- 
/xara eviKoXaTrrov : /cat to ypacpsiv de 7ra\aia.Q evepyeiag ovo/xa : Zve/ioig yftp 
thtiv ervrrovvro (TToixtia, rode %vsiv ypa<peiv eXeyero. The Note proceeds : 
" Tabellae autem istae etiam scalpendo et radendo poliebantur, quod itidem 
voce Zteiv et %veiv dentabatur." 

12 These were light and portable cases for the Emperor's more private use. 
The Scrinia were repositories of more importance. They contained as well 
domestic as official documents, and the duties coupled with them were of 
magnitude and responsibility. The Scrinia belonging to the several functions 
of the palace were like the official portfolios which, in modern times, belong to 
the several departments of state requiring the custody of written documents ; 
the principal Superintendent in each having the general title of magister or 
princeps. The principal of the praetorian prefecture was especially distin- 
guished by the appellation of Primiscrinius, or Primicerius, being the person, 
as some have plausibly surmised, first named in the waxen tablet or catalogue 
of that order of functionaries. There were three Scrinia held by officers more 
immediately attendant on the Emperor — " Epistolarum, libellorum, et me- 
moriae," — of which it seems the one containing the letters was the most im- 
portant. The contents of these several Scrinia were daily submitted to the 
Emperor's approbation, correction, or subscription. Alexander Severus, 
according to Lampridius, after mid-day always gave his attention to the 



OF LETTER-WRITING. 17 

of some importance in its latter history, — the assassination 
of the Emperor Commodus, which, according to Herodian, 
happened in the following manner. 

That profligate prince, unmoved by the entreaties of those 
about him, and especially of his favourite concubine, Marcia, 
had determined to exhibit himself to the people in the cha- 
racter of a gladiator; and on the day in which this dis- 
graceful scene was to be acted, he entered with his mind 
much irritated into his inner apartment. It was noon, and, 
as his custom was, he was about to take a short repose ; but 
before he disposed himself for sleep, he took up his tablet, or 
writing implement (ypajUL/uLaretov), one of those made, says 
the narrator, from the linden tree, and formed into laminae of 
a delicate texture, capable of being turned and folded on 
either side, so as to lie within a small compass; and upon it 
he wrote the names of those whom he devoted to death on 
the night of the same day. The first on the fatal list was 

reading and despatch of letters, when he was regularly attended by the three 
principal officers, " ab epistolis, et libellis, et a memoria ;" who generally 
continued standing in his presence, unless they laboured under any indis- 
position, when they were permitted to be seated. There was also the scrinium 
dispositionum, containing orders and appointments relating to domestic and 
official arrangements, the head of which department was called " Comes 
dispositionum." 

But over all the various duties of the palace, there were persons especially 
called "magistri (or principes) officiorum omnium," officers of supreme trust. 
In Codic. Justin. " primates officii et priores et capita officii" — Aliter atque 
aliter in diversis officiis nominabantur isti principes et magistri. In officio 
praefecturse praetorii qui primus erat et princeps, primiscrinius vocabatur. — 
Salmasii Not. in Vit. Gallieni. In the life of the Emperor Gallienus, by Tre- 
bellius Pollio, the biographer adds: "Quum iret in hortos nominis sui 
omnia palatina officia sequebantur. Ibant et praefecti, et magistri offi- 
ciorum omnium. Adhibebantur et conviviis et coenationibus." The com- 
mentator observes, that there were those who were called simply " magistri " 
icar e£oxnv, and whose dignity was denoted by the term magisteria : " De 
nullo alio magisteria ducebatur quam de hoc officiorum magistrorum, ex. o\ 
dignitas magistri militum non vocabatur magisteria, sed magisterium militum, 
et ita de aliis." Again : " Per magistros officiorum intellige singulorum 
officiorum palatinorum principes, qui omnes suberant illi quern dixi raa- 
gistro. The same by the Greek expositors are called tjysfiova tu>v sv avXij 

C 



18 MECHANISM AND MATERIALS 

Marcia, whose name was followed by those of Lsetus and 
Electus, two persons holding high offices in the palace. To 
these succeeded a dismal catalogue of the principal men in 
the empire, and especially those who remained of the distin- 
guished friends of the emperor's late father. 

Having finished the writing, he laid it upon the couch, not 
suspecting that any would enter the room. It happened, 
however, that a little boy, a great favourite with the emperor, 
and who used to run at liberty about the palace, entered the 
chamber, while the emperor, after his usual surfeit, was taking 
the bath, and seeing the tablet lying on the couch, he seized 
upon it for a plaything, and run with it out of the apartment. 
By accident he met Marcia approaching the chamber. The 
lady, who was also much attached to the child, took him up 
to caress him, and, perceiving the tablet in his hand, she took 
it from him to preserve it from injury. The handwriting of 
the emperor was visible upon it ; she read the inscription. 
' And is this,' she exclaimed, ' the reward of my long endurance 
of the indignities and contumelies of this man ?' Her course 
was immediately resolved upon. Lsetus and Electus were 
instantly communicated with; and poison having been first 
administered without the desired effect, a bold desperado, 
named Narcissus, was induced, by the promise of a large 
reward, to complete the tyrannicide, which he did by strang- 
ling the prince as he lay on his couch; an act easily accom- 
plished, in the helpless state to which the miserable man was 
reduced by the effect of the poison and his previous excess. 

By the above recital it appears, that long after the papyrus 
had acquired its celebrity, and the skins of animals had been 
improved into parchment at the court of Pergamus, tablets 
made of the bark of trees, especially of the lime or linden tree, 
were in use among those who had the power of choosing their 
materials. Whether books, properly so called, were ever 
made of bark, has been by many doubted, and by some alto- 
gether denied. MafFei stigmatizes the notion that public 
documents were ever inscribed on this substance, maintaining 
that the bark of the tilia was only used for making thin 



OF LETTER-WRITING. ]9 

tablets, or for mere diptycha or pocket-books, to be written on 
both sides, a process not practicable with the Egyptian papy- 
rus; while others speak as positively of diplomas and other 
official documents being recorded on the linden bark. 

Whether books can be properly said to have been ever 
made of this or that material, must depend upon the meaning 
we annex to the word book. In its extended sense, and par- 
ticularly as it is used in Scripture, it may be considered as 
comprising all manner of written instruments, as edicts, 
contracts, and even epistles; and what shall we say to the 
Latin word for book, which so specifically associates the idea 
of book with that of the bark of trees ? Those, therefore, who 
deny that books were, in their proper meaning, ever made of 
the bark of trees, must be thinking only of what we moderns 
mean by the term book. The message from Sennacherib to 
Hezekiah, is, in our translation, said to have been conveyed 
by letters; but the Hebrew word is EDHDP. In Esther, chap, 
ix. ver. 20, " Mordecai," says our text, " wrote these things, 
and sent letters unto all the Jews;" the word letters being the 
translation of the word sepherim, the sense of which the 
Seventy render by the Greek word j3t€Xmc- What particular 
sort of material was used on any of such ancient occasions as 
last referred to, is matter of very uncertain speculation. 

The manufacture of Egyptian papyrus must have intro- 
duced a considerable improvement into the world of letters; 
soon after the date of which discovery the great libraries of 
Alexandria and Pergamus began their accumulations. This 
useful manufacture is said by Varro to have been invented 
shortly after the building of Alexandria, in Egypt, by the 
conqueror from whom the city was named, where the fabrication 
of it was extensively carried on. But it has been said that a 
manufactory of papyrus existed at Memphis three hundred 
years before the reign of Alexander. 

The uses to which the plant has been applied have been very 
various; but for the particular purpose of affording paper to 
be written upon, the date given by Varro has probability and 
testimony to support it. It seems to have passed through 



20 MECHANISM AND MATERIALS 

several stages of improvement, and probably continued to be 
of a coarse contexture, till the Romans became masters of the 
country which produced it, who then made it the object of 
great care and attention. 13 

It was principally found on the banks of the Nile, and 
though it grew in considerable quantity on the margin of the 
Tigris and Euphrates, and other rivers, in Egypt only it 
appears to have been a regular staple and manufacture. 

As the demands of literature increased, the supply became 
inadequate. We are informed that in the age of Tiberius 
there was such a scarcity of paper at Rome, that its use, even 
in contracts, was dispensed with by a decree of the senate. 

Pliny the Elder, who says he saw, in the house of Pompo- 
nius Secundus, the books of the Gracchi, w T ritten with their 
own hands on papyrus, and that the works of Virgil and 
Cicero were written in the same material, has treated expressly 
of the Egyptian papyrus in three successive chapters of his 
13th book; and some curious information may be found on 
the subject in a commentary on these three chapters of the 
Roman naturalist, by Guilandrinus, a Prussian physician ; on 
which, however, Jos. Scaliger has passed an unsparing cen- 
sure, laying to his charge numerous mistakes in relation to 
the text of his author. 

The work of preparing paper from the papyrus is commenced 
by dividing, with a sharp instrument, the pellicles or filaments 
of the plant, which, when taken off, were extended on a plain 
surface, one being laid upon another transversely, or at right 
angles; and in this condition, being united by some glutinous 
substance, according to Pliny, afforded by the muddy water 
of the Nile, were pressed by a machine, or beaten with a 
mallet, into laminse, or sheets, for the purpose intended. 
Others have denied that there is any gummy or adhesive 
quality in the mud of the Nile, and have attributed the 

13 The Romans used paper of various qualities, often very finely wrought and 
polished. The charta dentata was that which was made very smooth by being 
rubbed with the tooth of a boar or other animal. There was a famous manu- 
factory at Rome for dressing Egyptian paper, conducted by one Fannius. 
Plin. xiii. 



OF LETTER-WRITING. 21 

adhesion of the stripes to one another to the saccharine 
matter of the plant itself. 

Vopiscus, in his account of the upstart Emperor, Firmus, 
relates, that so prodigious was his property in the paper of 
Egypt, that he was wont to boast that he was able to support 
an army with his papyrus and gluten; to which passage Sal- 
masius has subjoined a note, in which we are dazzled by his 
accustomed display of elaborate research. In opposition to 
the opinion of those who considered the Pretender's boast 
to imply only that he could maintain an army with the price 
of his paper, Salmasius contends for the literal import of the 
words used, and understands his author to mean that the two 
substances of which the paper in his possession was composed, 
was sufficient to supply aliment for an entire army. Papyrus 
is well known to be of an esculent quality, and to have been 
sometimes eaten by the Egyptians, who have been called 
Trcnrvpotyayoi, papyrus eaters. 14 The gluten also which was 
used in the manufacture, was of a nutritious nature, being 
composed of fine flour or mill-dust made into a paste with boil- 



14 The traveller, Dr. Clarke, makes mention of a sort of flag, the typha 
palustris, flourishing most luxuriantly in the shallows of the river Don. " We 
found," he says, " the inhabitants of Oxai, and afterwards of Tschirchaskoy, 
devouring this plant raw, with a degree of avidity as though it had been a 
religious observance. It was to be seen in all the streets, and in every house, 
bound into faggots, about three feet in length, as we tie up asparagus, which 
were hawked about or sold in the shops. They peel off the outer rind, and find 
near the root a tender white part of the stem, which, for about the length of 
eighteen inches, affords a crisp, cooling, and very pleasant article of food. We 
ate of it heartily, and were as fond of it as the Cossacks, with whom, young 
or old, rich or poor, it is a most favourite repast. The taste is somewhat 
insipid ; but in hot climates, so cool and pleasant a vegetable would be every- 
where esteemed. The Cossack officers, however, who had been in other 
countries, assured us that they found this plant fit for food only in the marshes 
of the Don.*' 

In another place the same traveller observes that in almost all its cha- 
racteristics the Don bears resemblance to the Nile. " It has the same regular 
annual inundation, covering a great extent of territory, over which we now 
passed by water to Tschirchaskoy, although the land is dry by the months of 
July or August. The same aquatic plants are found in both rivers, and in 
particular the same tall flags, reeds, and bulrushes, sometimes rising to the 
height of twenty feet." 



22 MECHANISM AND MATERIALS 

ing water, with the addition of a small quantity of vinegar ; or, 
of what was preferred for this purpose, fermented bread in boil- 
ing water, strained through a colander. Of this gluten and 
papyrus the Egyptian paper was composed. But in Egypt 
itself the turbid water of the Nile is said to have been chiefly 
used, which afforded, when drained, a glutinous substance of 
a sufficient consistence for the purpose intended. At Rome, 
where the manufacture was prepared with particular care, 
a gluten was made of superior properties to the mud of the 
Nile ; and in the days of Firmus the gluten used in Rome 
was adopted in Egypt, and thus that purpled adventurer 
came to say, in his boastful language, that he could with his 
property in paper maintain an army. 

Salmasius, borrowing from Pliny, describes the process. 
The papyrus was divided by a needle into the thinnest pos- 
sible stripes, the thinnest being the best suited to the purpose. 
The ends being then cut off, these stripes were laid lengthways 
in a frame, parallel and close together, and wetted with the 
water of the Nile. These stripes so disposed, like the warp in 
the loom, were laid horizontally; and upon these other layers 
were placed transversely, and in the same parallel close order, 
at right angles with those first laid in the frame, like the 
woof, or cross threads, of the weaver's yarn ; the first scheda, 
or sheet of connected stripes, being called by Pliny the stamen 
or statumen, and the transverse layers, or pellicles, the sub- 
temen.* Thus Lucan : 

Nondumjtumineas Memphis contexere biblos 
Noverat. 

The difference between the loom process and the paper making 
from the papyrus was only this : In the manufacture of the 
paper the transverse layers, answering to the subtemen, or 
woof, of the weaver, were simply laid across the statumen, or 
warp, with which it was connected by the help of the gluten ; 
whereas in the loom the transverse threads were carried by 

* Sec Plin. 1. xin. c. 12. 



OF LETTER-WRITING. 23 

the shuttle under and over the direct threads of the warp or 
web in regular alternation. The next process was to put the 
two sheets of papyrus thus connected together by the gluten 
into a press ; from which they were afterwards taken and 
dried in the sun. When these were in this manner sufficiently 
dried, they were put together in one roll, or volume, being 
first joined by some adhesive matter, and thus made to com- 
pose what in Pliny is termed the scapus, from the Greek 
(r/c?j7roc,dorice o7ca7roe, a rod, or stem, of columnal or cylindrical 
shape ; in the same sense as the word kclvwv is frequently 
employed, which was a straight round rod, or rule. Hesychius : 
Kavwv, to E,v\ov Kept 6 6 fiiTOQ, &Ci ; and Suidas : kcivoviov 
ovto fcaXarett 17 ola^rjiroTe Trpayfiarsia, kclv ttXelovwv rvyyavr) 

7TTV)^LlOVy 7] GTl^UJV, v) TTCiyiVijJV. 

Of what number of sheets the quire or roll of the papyrus 
consisted at different periods, whether ten or twenty, seems not 
to be a point of much importance; but some things relating to 
the fasces or parcels of the papyrus so united together, deserve 
our notice. It seems that the written papyrus was made up 
into similar rolls ; but the scapus, or gk^ttoq, more properly 
applied to the roll of paper before it was written upon, and 
tomus, or volumen, to the written rolls or books. By schedae 
were often meant single sheets torn off the scapi to receive 
what was hastily committed to it, to be afterwards entered or 
written out more fairly. In this detached form they reserved 
the extemporalia scripta et nondum emendata, which were 
written sometimes on the back of the sheet, and then had the 
name of opistographa, sometimes on the front or first page, 
and were then called adversaria. " In opistographis et adver- 
sariis rationes et diurna sua perscribebant,*quibus utramque 
chartae paginam occupabant, adversam et aversam, ab adversa 
dicta adversaria, ab aversa opistographa." Thus Lucian, in 
his dialogue Blojv tcqclgiq, says, that the satchel of the Cynics 
was stuffed with pulse and opistographal papers, in which they 
entered, as they occurred, their philosophical memorandums: 
" 0tAo<ro077jiiaTa, scilicet quaedam de secta sua incondite et tu- 
multuarie scripta." But whatever was written fairly out to be 



24 MECHANISM AND MATERIALS 

kept and preserved, was usually written on the front, not on the 
back of the sheet, or scheda, so that when the books of the 
papyrus were unrolled, the writing was all seen on the interior, 
and not on the exterior side of the paper ; and in this respect 
the papyrus books differed from the books composed of mem- 
branes, or skins, which, on account of the substance of that 
material, were written on both sides, the sheets being generally- 
laid one upon another, as in our modern books, and called 
tabellse, those of the papyrus books being called paginse. 
The pugillares, or small hand-books, were made up also of 
skins called tabellse by the Latins, and irTv\ia by the Greeks. 
The small manuals, or memorandum books, called pugillares, 
were made in the same way, being convenient for journals and 
short entries. The Latins had their duplices, triplices, &c; 
and the Greeks their Snrruxa and their Tro\vrrrv\a, 

Where the leaves of these books were composed of the inner 
rind or laminae of the bark of trees, they were often thinly 
waxed over,* making the pugillares deletitii, which, like our 
pocket-books, were carried about the person for notes and 
memorandums, to be effaced at will. 

In the rolls or volumes of papyrus, the sheets or leaves were 
glued to each other at the edges, and carried out in successive 
lengths, the first sheet or scheda (on which was usually no- 
thing but the manufacturer's mark, and the title of the book) 
being first fastened or glued, and called on that account the 
TTpwroKoWov, whence comes the word protocol in such fre- 
quent diplomatic use. The same term also denoted the prima 
scheda of the books composed of membranous leaves, whether 
of skin or bark. In respect of the quality of the papyrus, it 
is observable tha1> the excision being begun at the middle of 
the plant, the first pellicle or stripe was the finest and best ; 
the second the next in goodness, and so on to the outside of 
the plant; the last being the coarsest, and fit only for the 
commonest purposes. The paper made of the stripes nearest 
to the middle being the thinnest and finest, was distinguished 
from the time of Augustus Imp. to that of Claudius Imp. by 
the name of Augusta; and that which was made of the second 



OF LETTER-WRITING. 25 

stripe from the middle was denominated Livia, from the wife 
of Augustus. But the paper called Augusta was so fine 
as often to be penetrated by the reed or Roman pen, especially 
by those which were brought to a fine point (temperati calami), 
and sometimes to shew the writing through the paper: to 
remedy which defects the Emperor Claudius caused to be 
made a mixed paper, composed of the first and second stripe 
of the plant ; the latter being used for the statumen, or what 
answered to the warp or web, and the finer sort, or that which 
was taken nearest the middle, being put in the place of the 
subtemen or transverse stripes ; thus together producing a 
paper of sufficient delicacy for appearance, and sufficient sub- 
stance to resist the calamus or pen, and to prevent the letters 
from being visible through the paper. 

There are accounts also of a paper made in Madagascar, 
from the papyrus growing in that country, which is manu- 
factured by putting the leaves into a mortar, beating them 
to a paste, washing this paste with clear water on a frame 
of bamboos, expanding them into sheets^ and lastly glazing 
the surface with a decoction of rice water. 

The Egyptians also wrote on linen cloth, in periods very 
remote, specimens of which are often found with their 
mummies. A considerable number of MSS. written on papy- 
rus have been found in Herculaneum; and a process, under the 
patronage of the English court, has been long in operation to 
unfold them. The sheets are joined together, forming rolls, 
on which the characters, where the parts can be separated, 
can be easily read. But from the want of stops the sense is 
often difficult to be made out. Herculaneum was overwhelmed 
by the lava and burning ashes of the volcano, and of course 
the MSS. are in general half burned; and many are so united 
by the baked vegetable juice as to be impossible to be un- 
rolled. The MSS. which were discovered at Pompeii, crum- 
bled to powder when touched ; and some immediately upon 
their exposure to the air. The whole of Herculaneum lay so 
deep below the surface, and was so buried under ashes and 
lava, that the process of excavation has been attended with 



26 MECHANISM AND MATERIALS 

the greatest difficulty. One room only was found not entirely 
choked, where, in some presses and compartments, MSS. to 
the number of 1756 have been discovered; all, it seems, on 
the paper of papyrus. The use of goldbeaters' skin, in 
imparting a sort of substance to the paper, by being applied 
to the back, has of late years aided much the process of 
unrolling. Out of the entire number, about 210 are said 
to have been successfully laid open. 

Monfaucon considered the cotton paper to have been familiar 
in Europe for six or seven hundred years before his time ; and 
it is known with certainty to have been in common use in the 
Western world from the tenth century. It had the name of 
charta bombycina ; and Dr. Prideaux is of opinion that it was 
brought into Europe from the East. Some manuscripts in 
Arabic and other Oriental languages, of a very ancient date, 
are written on paper appearing to have been made of silk, 
linen, or cotton, intermixed. 15 Linen manuscripts are some- 
times found in the Egyptian mummy cases. There are MSS. 
on cotton paper of the tenth century in the Royal Library 
of Paris; and from the twelfth century they are as common 
as those on vellum or parchment. 

The patronage of literature by the kings of Pergamus, 
which began about the middle of the third century before 
the Christian era, in the reign of Eumenes, put invention to 
the stretch to discover a substitute for the Egyptian papyrus ; 
which, from envy or other motives, was about this time for- 
bidden to be carried out of the country which produced it. 
The improvement produced by these efforts appeared in the 
elaboration of the skins of beasts into parchment and vellum, 
of which the origin stands recorded in the name of perga- 
menum. Of the leaves of vellum, or parchment, books of two 
descriptions were made ; one in the form of rolls composed of 
many leaves, sewed or glued together at the end. These were 
written on one side only, and required to be unrolled before 
they could be read. The other kind was like our present books, 

15 Prideaux, Conn. P. I. B. 7. 



OF LETTER-WRITING. 27 

made of many leaves fastened to one another. They were written 
on both sides, and were opened like modern books. The im- 
provement of this useful and convenient fabric could not fail 
to recommend it to general adoption wherever the purchase 
of it could be afforded, and particularly where any subject of 
importance was to be committed to writing. There were 
advantages, however, in the papyrus, which kept it in extensive 
use, till the better and more substantial paper made of cotton, 
equally flexible, compressible, and durable, was invented : a 
discovery known in the western world (say some writers) as 
early as the fifth century. 

The pergamenum kept its place amongst the latest improve- 
ments in the substances applicable to the art of writing; and, 
indeed, its competency to resist ordinary accidents, its capacity 
of being rolled into a volume, and the hardness of its surface, 
making the ink shew itself upon it almost in relief, will pro- 
bably secure for it a preference, where the above qualities are 
important. After the introduction of paper made of cotton, it 
is probable the papyrus was little used in Europe. It naturally 
gave place to the more substantial substitute ; besides which its 
diffusion was much impeded by the subjugation of Egypt to 
the dominion of the Saracens, so that there are few, if any, 
manuscripts on the papyrus posterior to the eighth century. 

The great invention of the manufacture of paper from linen 
rags has not been traced with any certainty to its origin. 
There are no distinct vestiges of its adoption among us before 
the fourteenth century. Some have given the honour of the 
invention to the Arabians ; an opinion which seems, however, 
to have little to support it. There appears to be better reason 
for assigning to the Chinese the credit of the discovery; but 
it has been claimed by every nation of the civilised world. One 
thing is clear, — that it is a discovery which has wonderfully 
increased the commerce of intelligence, and the amount of 
moral good and evil of which the intellect of man is capable. 
To it we may attribute the discontinuance of the practice of 
erasing from books the classical remains of antiquity, to make 
room for the legends and chronicles of monkish invention. 



28 



CHAPTER III. 

OF PENS, PENCILS, AND INK. 

The style, used by the ancients, was an instrument made of 
wood, metal, and other materials, pointed at one end, and 
blunt at the other; with the sharp end the}r wrote upon their 
tablets, covered with a sort of wax, using the obtuse end to 
obliterate the writing, or any part of it, when necessary. But 
when they wrote upon parchment, or papyrus, they made use 
of a reed, dipped in some staining or colouring liquor. 
Baruch is said, in the thirty-sixth chapter of Jeremiah, to have 
written his prophecies with ink, which is probably the earliest 
mention of this method of writing to which we can refer; 
though there is reason for supposing that the use of the reed 1 
dipped in some marking liquor, existed in very ancient times 
in China, and other parts of the East. 2 It is the instrument 
at this day used in writing by the Turks, Persians, and 
Arabians. 

The Indian, or, more properly, the Chinese ink, needs only 
to be slightly rubbed in water to afford a substance rather solid 
than fluid, well adapted to the purpose of writing. 3 Ink- 

1 Du Hald. Descr. Chin. vol. i. p. 363. Phil. Trans. No. ccxxvii.p. 155. 

2 Called by the Romans stylus or graphium. 

3 In the work on the Empire of China and its Inhabitants, by John 
Francis Davis, Esq., late his Majesty's Chief Superintendent in China, 1836, 
will be found the following information on this subject : 

" The date of the invention of paper seems to prove that some of the most 
important arts connected with the progress of civilization, are not extremely 
ancient in China. In the time of Confucius they wrote on finely-pared bark 
of the bamboo with a style. They next used silk and linen. It was not 
until a.d. 95, that paper was invented. The materials which they use in the 
manufacture are various. A coarse yellowish paper, used for wrapping parcels, 
is made from rice straw. The better kinds are composed of the liber or inner 



PENS, PENCILS, AND INK. 29 

stands, with pens (reeds) lying by them, are represented in 
pictures found in Herculaneum. Those reeds were dipped in 
some liquid substance, various in its composition and colour, 
but for the most part black, and expressed by the word atra- 
mentum in Latin. It sometimes had the name of ccepia 
among the Latins, which signified the black or dark liquor 
emitted by the cuttle-fish. In Greek it had the general name 
of ypa(j>LKov [xeXav. St. John, in his Third Epistle, says, he 
did not intend to write with pen (reed) and ink. Allusions also 
to this mode of writing occur in most of the authors of the 
Augustan period, and their literary successors. 

bark of a species of the moras, as well as of cotton, but principally of the 
bamboo ; and we may extract the description of the last from the Chinese 
Repository, vol. iii. p. 265 : — ' The stalks are cut near the ground, and then 
sorted into parcels according to the age, and tied up in small bundles. The 
younger the bamboo, the better is the quality of the paper which is made from 
it. The bundles are thrown into a reservoir of mud and water, and buried in 
the ooze for about a fortnight to soften them. They are then taken out, and 
cut into pieces of a proper length, and put into mortars with a little water, to 
be pounded to a pulp with large wooden pestles. This semi-fluid mass, after 
being cleansed of the coarsest parts, is transferred to a great tub of water, and 
additions of the substance are made until the whole becomes of a sufficient 
consistence to form paper. Then a workman takes up a sheet with a mould 
or frame of proper dimensions, which is constructed of bamboo in small strips 
made smooth and round like wire. The pulp is continually agitated by other 
hands, while one is taking up the sheets, which are then laid upon smooth 
tables to dry. This paper is unfit for writing on with liquid ink, and is of a 
yellowish colour. The Chinese size it by dipping the sheets into a solution of 
fish glue and alum, either during or after the first process of making it. The 
sheets are usually three feet and a half in length, and two in breadth. The 
fine paper used for letters is polished, after sizing, by rubbing it with smooth 
stones.' 

" What is commonly known in this country under the name of Indian ink, 
is nothing more than what the Chinese manufacture for their own writing. 
The writing apparatus consists of a square of their ink ; a little black slab of 
schestus, or slate, found in the mountains called Leu-shan, on the west side of 
the Poyang lake, (where the last embassy saw quantities of these slabs manu- 
factured for sale,) polished smooth, with a depression at one end to hold water; 
a small brush, or pencil of rabbits' hair, inserted into a reed handle ; and 
a bundle of paper. 

" The Chinese, or, as it is miscalled, Indian ink, has been erroneously sup- 
posed to consist of the secretion of a species of sepia or cuttle-fish. It is, 



30 PENS, PENCILS, AND INK. 

Sometimes, in order to make the writing more visible where 
the person addressed laboured under an infirmity of eye-sight, 
the letter was written with black ink (atramento) upon ivory ; 
and these epistles were called pugillares eborei.* Thus the 
Roman epigrammatist : 

Languida ne tristes obscurent lumina cera, 
Nigra tibi niveum littera pingat ebur. 

Mart. lib. xiv. Ep. 5. 

The Romans found it generally convenient, in composing, to 

manufactured from lamp-black and gluten, with the addition of a little musk 
to give it a more agreeable odour. A black dye is also obtained from the cup 
of the acorn, which abounds in gallic acid. Pere Contancin gave the fol- 
lowing as a process for making the ink : A number of lighted wicks are put 
into a vessel full of oil ; over this is hung a dome or funnel-shaped cover of 
iron, at such a distance as to receive the smoke. Being well coated with 
lamp-black, this is brushed off and collected upon paper. It is then well 
mixed in a mortar with a solution of gum or gluten, and when reduced to the 
consistence of a paste, it is put into little moulds, where it receives those 
shapes and impressions with which it comes into this country. It is occa- 
sionally manufactured into a great variety of forms and sizes, and stamped 
with ornamental devices, either plain or in gold and various colours. 

" They consider that the best ink is produced from the burning of particular 
oils, but the commoner and cheaper kinds are obtained, it is said, from fir 
wood. The best ink is produced at Hoey-chow-foo, not far from Nanking : 
and a certain quantity annually made for the use of the emperor and the 
court, is called Koong-me, ' tribute ink.' The best ink is that which is the 
most intensely black, and most free from grittiness." 

In the Himalayan provinces there is a plant found in great abundance, 
called Sitabharua, from which a coarse paper is made, by first detaching the 
bark of the stem and branches, and then submitting the same to the process 
of boiling, pounding it into a paste, straining it through a cloth to get rid of 
the coarser fibres, drying it in the sun, and finally spreading it upon a cotton 
cloth stretched upon a frame ; and this has probably been practised for cen- 
turies. The fabric is coarse, but capable of great improvement. See the de- 
scription of the plant Daphne Cannavina by Dr. Wallich, Asiatic Researches, 
vol. xiii. and of the mode of making paper from it in Journ. of the Asiatic 
Society, vol. i. p. 8. 

Paper is said to be manufactured in Kashmire, in considerable quantities, 
from old cloth of the Jan-hemp, and from cotton rags. See Travels of Moor- 
croft and Trebeck, from 1819 to 1825. Murray. 

4 Arundo, fistula, and canna, split at the point. 



31 

write their thoughts first upon waxen tables, for the facility of 
making alterations or corrections; and perhaps also for expe- 
dition, as they had no occasion to leave off for dipping the 
pen ; and when the draft was thus made correct, it was tran- 
scribed upon paper or parchment. They had also a blotting- 
paper, of a coarse contexture, which they called charta dele- 
titia, and which had also the Greek name of irakifiiptaroQ, from 
iraXiv, rursus, and ifaw, rado, from which what was written 
upon it might be easily rubbed out, or erased. 5 The better 
sort usually carried about them their pugillares, or small 
writing tables, on which they set down any thing which 
occurred. Thus Pliny, in his agreeable letter to his friend 
Tacitus, tells him that he took care to have about him, even 
when hunting, his stylus et pugillares, " ut si manus vacuas, 
plenas tamen ceras reportarem." 6 As the Romans wore neither 
sword nor dagger when in the city, they sometimes had re- 
course to the iron style which they thus carried about their 
persons, as a weapon of defence : accordingly we read in 
Suetonius, that Julius Caesar, when assaulted by the conspi- 
rators, upon receiving his first wound, pierced the arm of the 
assassin with his stylus, or graphium. Quintus Antyllius, 
one or the lictors of the consul Opimius, who offended 
the followers of Caius Gracchus, in the forum of Rome, by 
his pushing them aside with contempt, as they were support- 
ing their friend, was fallen upon by them in the fury of 
their resentment, and slain with their styles, or writing 
instruments. 7 



5 Cic. Fam. lib. vii. Cicero to Trebatius. 6 Plin. lib. i. Ep. 6. 

7 Florus, I. iii. c. 15. The friends of Caius Gracchus and Fulvius were 
greatly exasperated by his rejection, on his standing for the tribuneship the 
third time. His disappointment was followed by the elevation of his great 
enemy, L. Opimius, to the consulship, who exerted the whole power of his 
office to procure the repeal of Caius's popular laws. Caius, it is said, at the 
instigation of Fulvius, the triumvir, collected his friends, to defeat the consul's 
measures. On the day for proposing the abrogation of the laws in question, 
both parties repaired early in the morning to the capitol. While the consul 
was performing the customary sacrifices, Q. Antyllius, one of his lictors, while 
carrying away the entrails of the victims, said to the friends of Caius and Ful- 



32 PENS, PENCILS, AND INK. 

Seneca, in his tract on Clemency, makes mention of a 
Roman knight, who having whipped his son to death, w r as him- 
self put to death by the people in the forum, who stabbed him 
with their styles. " Populus in foro graphiis confodit." 8 From 
which occasional use of this instrument, it is probable that 
the word stilletto in the modern language of Rome had its 
origin. 

The case for holding the implements of writing was called 
by the Romans scrinium, or capsa, 9 and by the Greeks icifiwror 
or KificoTtov ; a very essential part of the furniture or equip- 
ment of a person of any rank or importance in the more 
polished nations of antiquity. 

The use of black lead pencils, both for writing and draw- 
ing, is of old standing, though hardly, if at all, traceable 
to the times of Greek and Roman antiquity. There is, in- 
deed, a hint of it in the works of Pliny, where we have the 
words argento, aere, plumbo, linese ducuntur. 10 But the 
passage seems to signify nothing more than the use of these 
substances in making lines by the help of the rule. This 
application of these materials, and especially of lead, as being 
soft and easily rubbed out, appears to have been in practice 
many centuries ago. We know that above a thousand years 
ago transcribers made their writings even and regular by 
means of parallel lines, to be erased after having answered 
their purpose. In very old MSS. the traces of those lines are 
very visible; but, according to Beckman, this practice became 
rare after the fifteenth century, about which period the MSS. 
exhibit a want of the parallelism which is characteristic of 
the more ancient specimens. 

The use of lead pencils in writing has an early date in 
modern history. Gesner, in his book on Fossils, printed at 

vius, " Make way, ye worthless citizens, for honest men." And it is added, that 
he accompanied these words with a contemptuous motion of his hand, where- 
upon they fell upon him and killed him with their styles or pens of their tables. 
6 Seneca, de Clement, lib. i. cap. 14. 
9 Horat. Sat. lib. i. Sat. 4. lin. 22. 
10 Plin. lib. xxxiii. p. 136, 



33 

Zurich in 1565, says, that pencils for writing were used in 
his day, with wooden handles and pieces of lead, or, as he 
rather believed, an artificial composition, called by some 
stimmi anglicanum. 11 Towards the end of the same century, 
Imperati mentions the graffio piombino, and says it was more 
convenient for drawing than pen and ink. The mineral, he 
says, was smooth, greasy to the touch, had a leaden colour, 
and a sort of metallic brightness. One kind was mixed with 
a clay, which they called rubrica. 12 But the pencils prin- 
cipally in use in Italy, at the period of the revival of letters, 
were composed of lead and tin, the proportion being two parts 
of the former to one of the latter ; which pencil was called a 
stile. It seems that the oldest certain account of the use of 
quills in writing, which has reached us, occurs in a passage 
in Isidorus Hispalensis, who died in 636. He mentions reeds 
and feathers, as instruments employed in writing. There is, 
besides, a small Latin poem on a writing pen, to be seen in 
the works of Anthelmus; the first Saxon, says Beckman, 
who wrote Latin, and who made the art of Latin poetry 
known to his countrymen. He is said also to have inspired 
them with some taste for compositions of this kind. He died 
in 709. The poem, De Penna Scriptoria, begins thus : 

Me pridem genuit candens onocrotalus albam, 

which, if not descriptive of a goose-quill, at least supposes an 
implement furnished by a feathered animal. Writing pens 
are mentioned by Alcuin, who lived in the eighth century, 
somewhat later than Anthelmus, and composed poetical in- 
scriptions for every part of a monastery, and among others for 
the writing study ; of which he says, that no one ought to 
talk in it, as it was very important that the pen of the tran- 
scriber should go correctly on without mistake. 

Tramite quo recto penna volantis eat. 

Mabillon saw a MS. of the Gospel written in the ninth 

11 De Rerum Fossilium Figuris, p. 104. 

12 Del Historia Naturale di Ferrante Imperato. In Napoli, 1599, p. 122, 

P 



34 PENS, PENCILS, AND INK. 

century, in which the Evangelists were represented with 
quills in their hands. In the curious little work of Henricus 
Ackerus, called " Historia Pennarum," in which he treats of 
the pens of the famous Academicians, published at Altenburgh 
in 1726, we read of the one pen of Leo Allatius, with which 
he wrote his Greek for forty years, and on losing which he 
is said to have with difficulty refrained from tears. " Et eo 
tandem amisso tantum non lacrymasse." P. Holland, the 
translator of Pliny, performed his work with a single pen, and 
he has handed down the fact in the following verse : 

With one sole pen I wrote this book, 

Made of a grey goose-quill; 
A pen it was when I it took, 

A pen I leave it still. 

Cicero, in a letter to his brother Quintus, makes some 
pleasant allusions to his bad pen; 14 in which he tells him 
that he is apt to snatch up whatever pen (calamus) comes 
first to hand. 

13 Ad Quint. Prat. lib. ii. ep. xv. " Calamo et atramento temperate-, charta 
etiam dentata res agetur. Scribis enim te meas litteras superiores vix legere 
potuisse : in quo nihil eorum, mi frater, fuit, quse putas. Neque enim occu- 
patus eram, neque perturbatus, nee iratus alicui: sed hoc facio semper, ut, 
quicumque calamus in manus meas venerit, eo sic utar tamquam bono." 



35 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE FORMS OF ANCIENT LETTERS. 

In the more early as well as the classic ages of antiquity- 
letters were made for delivery much in the same way as were 
their books, — generally in rolls ; and when paper and parch- 
ment came into use, with a wrapper of the coarser kinds of 
these materials, on which the name or address of the person 
written to was sometimes inscribed. In Cicero's time, a 
letter, if long, was divided into pages ; and it seems that 
Julius Caesar was accustomed to send his letters to the senate 
in a sort of book distinctly paged, and folded together, differ- 
ing, in this respect, from former generals, who, when they 
wrote to the senate, carried the line along the sheet, without 
any division or paging. In this practice he was followed by 
succeeding emperors. These epistles on public business were 
sometimes called libelli, 1 and sometimes codicilli ; litterse 
being the word generally in use to signify familiar letters. 
Thus Cicero to Lepta : " Accepi a Seleuco tuo litteras ; statim 
qusesivi a Balbo per codicillos, quid esset in lege," &c. 2 

The Romans sealed their letters usually with some device 
or symbol, to notify the writer, and identify the person written 
to. In the Pseudolus of Plautus, the bearer thus accosts 
the person to whom he brings the letter : 

Nosce imaginem ; tute ejus nomen memorato mild, 
Ut sciam te JBallionem esse ipsum. 3 

The wax, with the impression, kept the letter closed, and hence 

1 " Sed jam supplicibus dominura lassare libellis." Mart. lib. viii. ep.xxxi. 

2 Cic. ad. Fam. lib. vi. ep. xviii ; and see Tacit. Ann. lib. xvi. c. 24. 

3 Plaut. Pseud. Act. iv. Seen. ii. v. 29 ; Id. Bacch. Act. iv. Seen. 6. v. 19. 



36 THE FORMS OF ANCIENT LETTERS. 

the phrase, Solvere Epistolam : and as the impression or sig- 
num was generally defaced or broken in opening the letters, 
the messenger or bearer usually required the person to whom 
it was to be delivered to acknowledge the signum, 4 and name 
the writer, that it might with the more certainty appear that 
he was the person to whom the letter belonged. Thus Cicero, 
in his third oration against Catiline : " Ostendi tabellas Len- 
tulo, et quaesivi cognosceretne signum." 

Augustus Caesar at first adopted a sphinx for the device of 
his seal, both in his public acts and in his epistles; after- 
wards the figure of Alexander the Great; and ultimately his 
own likeness, engraved by Dioscorides ; which impression his 
successors continued to use ; and we are informed by his 
accurate biographer, that he was so precise in dating his 
letters, that he added the hour of the day or night in which 
they were written. 5 

It was not unusual with the great men among the Romans 
to use one of the alphabetical characters in the place of the 
other, where it was their design to convey certain intelligence 
or orders to be understood only by the person written to ; the 
transposition having been previously concerted. Upon these 
occasions Julius Caesar, instead of the proper letter, made use 
of the letter that came fourthly after it in the alphabetical 
order ; as D for A, and so on. And Augustus used the letter 
immediately following the letter which should properly have 
been used. 6 

In writing letters it was customary with the Romans to put 
their own names first, and after it the name of the person 
written to/ generally with the addition of Suo, to express the 
regard or affection of the writer : on which practice Martial 
has the following epigram .: 



4 Plaut. Pseud. Act. iv. Seen. ii. v. 29 ; Id. Bacch. Act. iv. Seen. 6. v. 19. 

5 Sueton. Aug. 

6 Sueton. Jul. et Aug. ; and see Aul. Gell. lib. xvii. c. 9. 

7 Paulino Ausonius ; metrum sic suasit ut esses 
Tu prior, et nomen progrederere meura. 

Aus. ep. xx. 



THE FORMS OF ANCIENT LETTERS. 37 

Seu leviter noto, sen caro missa sodali; 
Omnes ista solet charta vocare suos. 

Mart. lib. xiv. ep. xi. 

Sometimes in flattery to the emperors, the letter-writer added 
Suus to his own name. Thus iElius Spartianus, the Augustan 
historian, superscribes his epistle to Dioclesian : " Dioclesiano 
Aug. iElius Spartianus suus salutem." By which word i suus ' 
an expression of peculiar homage and devotedness was in- 
tended ; similar in sense to the Greek phrase 6 avrov idiog, 
as is observed by Casaubon, who adds : " Sic Eutropius in 
Epistola ad Valentem. Sed non epistolse nomen suum prse- 
scripsit, sed in ima cera, more qui hodie obtinet, subscripsit 
hoc modo ' Eutropius V. C. peculiariter suus:' id. est, vestrse 
clementise peculiaris servus, aut domesticus." 

Other epithets were also added where the person addressed 
held any office of dignity ; and not unfrequently a word was 
used declarative of peculiar esteem, affection, or reverence ; 
as " optimo, dulcissimo," &c. " Salutem," as wishing health 
and safety, followed the name in Roman, and yaipuv, by which 
the same compliment was intended, usually stood prefixed to 
Greek epistles. The Roman letter ended with the word Vale, 
while the Greek concluded with Eppuxro, a word of the same 
import. Sometimes, indeed, the letter of a Roman to his 
friend was closed with the more emphatic compliment of "Cura 
ut valeas," — take care of your health ; " fac ut diligentissime te 
ipsum custodias." And when an exalted person was addressed, 
ceremony required such words as " Deos obsecro ut te con- 
servarint," — Heaven preserve you ! 8 



8 The letters of eastern correspondence in ancient times very frequently 
commenced with the introductory words, " Thus says," u.fc Xeyet. In this 
manner begins the letter of Amasis, the Egyptian king, to Polycrates, and 
of Oroetes to the same tyrant of Samos, as given us in the Third Book of 
Herodotus ; A/jmmtiq TJoXvicpaTSi, (bde \sysi, 'Opoirrjg ILo\vicpaT£i, 6)df Xsyei ; 
and to the letter in Thucydides, i. 129, hde Xeyei PchtiXevq EspZriQ Uavcravia^ 
which letters will be produced in their proper place. The letter of the king of 
Assyria to the king of Jerusalem is commenced with similar introductory 
words : " Thus saith the king of Assyria," 2 Kings, xviii. 31. Wesseling, 



38 THE FORMS OF ANCIENT LETTERS. 

in his note on the passage in Herodotus, above cited, says of this epistolary 
form of commencement, " Nihil simplicius et per Orientem olim probatius 
hac in Epistolis et Regum edictis formula." 

/Elian, in his Book of Various Histories, 1. xii. c. 51 , has a pleasant story, of 
which we are here reminded. " Menecrates, a physician of Syracuse, was so 
elated with the extraordinary cures performed by him, that he assumed the title 
of Jove, as being the dispenser of life to man; and accordingly, in a letter to 
Philip, king of Macedon, he adopted the following address : $i\i7T7rw Mevt- 
Kparrjg 6 Zevg ev irparreiv : ' To Philip Menecrates Jupiter sends felicity;' to 
which the monarch replied, heading his letter thus : ^iXnrrrog MeveicpaTti 
vyiaivuv ; * Philip to Menecrates sends sanity.' '* The anecdote which follows 
is amusing. Philip having ordered a sumptuous banquet, invited the celestial 
physician. The invitation was condescendingly accepted by Menecrates, who 
being introduced, was respectfully seated by himself at a separate table, with 
a censer placed before him ; in which situation he was left to regale himself 
with the fumes of the incense. At first he was much pleased with the homage 
shewn him; but after a while growing hungry, and finding nothing more sub- 
stantial proposed to him, he left the place with much dissatisfaction. 

The first use of the salutation x ai 9 HV is ascribed by many of the Greek 
grammarians to the demagogue, Cleon, who, they say, prefixed it, instead of 
ev TTparreiv, to his letter informing the Athenians of his victory at Pylum. 
But Xenophon, who would not have borrowed from Cleon, prefixed it to the 
pleasing letter which he makes Cyrus write to Cyaxares ; Kvpov Ilatd. lib. iv. 
Artemidorus, who wrote about a century before Christ, says, that the words 
Xaipeiv and sppwao, were the familiar beginning and ending of every epistle, 
idiov iraariQ £7ri<ro\»?e. And Horace alludes to the custom in lib. i. ep. 8 : 

" Celso gaudere et bene rem gerere Albinovano 
Musa rogata refer." 

According to Lucian, Plato censured the practice as ixoxQnpov, (poor and 
vulgar,) though he himself uses it in his third epistle to Dionysius. He 
prefers the word awcppovei, or the words yvwGi aeavTov, as a better salutation. 
But he did not banish the word x«ip"v. It is prefixed to the letter sent by the 
apostles and elders to the brethren at Antioch, to which tppuxro is subjoined; 
and so also the letter from Claudius Lysias to Felix, Acts xxiii. which letter 
has a claim, from the situation in which we find it, to be regarded as genuine ; 
the words Trepuxovaav tov tvkov tovtov, being properly translated in our 
Bible, " after this manner," and not " in this form," or " tenour." Diogenes 
Laertius notices the different salutations prefixed to the letters of the Greek 
philosophers.— Diog. Laert. lib. iii. s. 61. 



3D 



CHAPTER V. 

CONVEYANCE BY POSTS. 

The conveyance of despatches and royal letters and messages, 
by regular couriers, was a provision that entered into the 
policy of very ancient states or kingdoms in the eastern por- 
tion of the globe. Job compares the transitoriness of life to 
the swiftness of the post. 1 And again, in Jeremiah, c. li. v. 31. 
" One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to 
meet another, to shew the king of Babylon that his city is 
taken." So, in the third chapter of the book of Esther, v. 13, 
we read, that " letters were sent by the posts into all the 
king's provinces." In Persia, more especially, the institution 
of regular posts appears to have been an object of attention 
as early at least as the reign of Cyrus. The passage in the 
Cyropsedia of Xenophon is very clear and particular on this 
head. " We have been informed also of another invention of 
Cyrus for promoting the prosperity of his empire, by providing 
a method of communication whereby intelligence might be 
brought of what happened in places the most remote. Having 
considered what journey a horse was capable of performing in 
the course of a day, he ordered stables accordingly to be pre- 
pared at the proper distances from each other, and stationed 
horses in each of them, with persons to take care of them and 
have them in readiness. He placed also a person at each of 
these stations, who might receive the letters brought to them 
and hand them over to others, taking due care of the tired 
men and horses, and providing others fresh and prepared for 
going forward. In this manner the conveyance was to be 
carried on successively by night as well as by day ; — an 
arrangement so complete, that Xenophon thus speaks of it : 

1 Job, ix. 25. p signifies a runner or courier. 



40 CONVEYANCE BY POSTS. 

" Some say the progress was more rapid than the flight 6f 
cranes. If this be an over-statement, it is however certain, 
that no journey by a human being made on land was ever so 
expeditious." 2 The same institution of ^05^5 in the Persian 
empire, as it existed in the time of Xerxes, is noticed by Hero- 
dotus in the following manner. A man and horse were posted 
at the regular intervals of a day's journey, to deliver the 
letters to each other in succession, till they reached the place 
of their destination. From one relay to the other the journey 
was to be performed in the time prescribed, whatever might 
be the state of the weather or the obstacles of the way ; and 
the historian remarks, that nothing mortal was ever known to 
proceed with greater celerity. 3 

This institution is expressed by the word ayyapeiov, in the 
Ionic idiom of Herodotus ayyaprfiov, a term borrowed from 
the language of Persia, where it appears, if not to have had its 
origin, at least to have attained to great perfection. The 
messengers employed had the name of ayyapoi, angari ; and 
the noun ayyapeia, from its primary use in designating the in- 
stitution and conduct of the posts, came at length to indicate 
any compulsory service, but especially a journey by constraint. 
The verb ayyapzvuv has also this derivative sense, and is 
thus used in St. Matthew's Gospel, ch. v. ver. 41 : " Whoso- 
ever shall compel thee to go (ayyapewzi) a mile, go with 
him twain." The force of which word in the original is not 
properly understood, but by adverting to the authority of the 
ayyagoiy to press others into their service by way of expe- 
diting the post. The principal couriers or postmasters of 
Persia appear to have been persons of some importance in 
the dominions of the Persian monarchs ; and, if we may credit 
Plutarch on this head, Darius Codomannus was originally one 
of that order ; a circumstance, among many others, affording 
some confirmation to the testimony which history bears to the 
pains bestowed in this quarter of the globe, at an early period, 



3 Xenoph. Kvpov Haidtiag, /3i§\. H. 642. ed. Hutch. 1727. 
3 Herod. Uran. 08. 



CONVEYANCE BY POSTS. 41 

on the means of conveying intelligence and instructions be- 
tween places at great distances from each other. Throughout 
the eastern states a similar attention to the establishment of 
posts, or the provisions for the rapid conveyance of important 
despatches, appears to have been paid, and continued to modern 
times. In the dominions of the Mogul emperors, as well as 
in the provinces subjugated by the Turks and Tartars, the 
speed of couriers on foot, or on the backs of horses or drome- 
daries, has been always an object of great importance. A 
modern traveller, who relates in a very entertaining manner 
his journey from British India to Bochara, gives the follow- 
ing account : " We continued our march to Tugduluk, and 
passed the Soorkh road, or red river, by a bridge, with a 
variety of other small streams, which pour the melted snow 
of the Sufued Kob into that rivulet. On our way we could 
distinguish that the road had once been made, and also the 
remains of the post-houses which had been constructed every 
five or six miles by the Mogul emperors, to keep up a com- 
munication between Delhi and Cabool. They may even be 
traced across the mountains of Balkh ■; for both Humaioon 
and Aurungzebe, in their youth, were governors of that 
country. " What an opinion," adds the traveller, " does this 
inspire of the grandeur of the Mogul empire ; it had a system 
of communication between the most distant provinces as 
perfect as the posts of the Caesars." 4 In our admiration, how- 
ever, of these magnificent arrangements for the facilitation of 
correspondence, we must not attribute to these eastern estab- 
lishments such a provision for general communication as is 
made by our modern posts. These public conveyances were 
contrived only for the service of the state, or rather of the 
court, and for the transmission of instructions and des- 
patches ; and if they were occasionally made use of by private 
persons, or for personal communication, the risk of disclosure 
must have made it an unfit and unsafe vehicle. Servants, 
hired messengers, or travelling friends, furnished the only 

4 Travels to Bochara, by Lieut. Burnes. 



42 CONVEYANCE BY POSTS. 

means of carrying on a free correspondence ; and it is easy to 
imagine how greatly the uncivilized, unsettled, and tumultuous 
state of those ancient communities multiplied the chances of 
miscarriage ; not to mention the negligence or treachery of the 
private irresponsible hands to which the charge was neces- 
sarily committed. The old historians record numerous in- 
stances of subtle expedients and contrivances to transmit 
intelligence so as to avoid the danger of treachery or dis- 
covery. The story of the table covered with wax after the 
letters had been engraved on the wood, and sent by Dema- 
ratus to the Lacedemonians, has been related in a former part 
of this volume, where it was introduced to shew the early use 
of these waxen tablets; and Herodotus has several other 
similar anecdotes. 

The transmission of information by letters was always 
attended with risk or uncertainty in the disorderly state of 
ancient manners ; the establishment of posts being (as I have 
observed) rather an organ of courts and governments, than a 
medium of general communication. Private hands and special 
messengers were perpetually betraying their employers, as we 
may learn from the history as well as the drama of the 
ancients. Herodotus records a striking instance of treachery 
in the conduct of the internuncius of Histiseus, who, instead 
of carrying the epistles of that general to his friends in Ionia, 
who were complotting with him against the Persian govern- 
ment, delivered them to Artaphernes, the great Persian satrap 
and commander in that province. 5 The stratagem of Har- 
pagus, who despatched a letter in the body of a hare to the 
young Cyrus to persuade him to take up arms against his 
grandfather Astyages, is one among several curious methods 
of eluding discovery in the conveyance of secret intelligence, 
which we meet with in the same historian. 6 

The story of Artabazus is as follows: That general having 
laid siege to Potidaea, was informed that Timoxenus was 
disposed to deliver up the city by treachery; but it being a 



Herod, lib. vi. s. 4. 6 Herod, lib. i. s. 123, 4. 



CONVEYANCE BY POSTS. 43 

matter of the greatest difficulty and danger to interchange 
intelligence with him, the following expedient was adopted : 
A letter was written on a scroll, and wound round an arrow, 
which was shot from a bow so as to reach a certain place 
agreed upon; and an answer was sent back by the same 
method. On one occasion, however, Artabazus missed the 
mark, and the arrow, instead of falling where it was intended, 
struck the shoulder of one of the citizens. The people, gather- 
ing round him, and taking up the arrow, on which they found 
the letter, carried it to the proper authorities, and thus the 
plot was discovered. 7 

Another more subtle method 8 is related of the same His- 
tiaeus before mentioned. Being detained at Susa by the 
Persian king, and wishing to convey to Aristagoras, at Mi- 
letus, in Ionia, information of his intended defection, he 
shaved the head of one of his servants, on whose fidelity he 
could rely, and wrote, or rather engraved, upon his skull a 
letter containing the secret. After this was done, the hair 
was suffered to grow again, and as soon as this had taken 
place the man was sent to Miletus, where he safely arrived, 
and delivered his message to Aristagoras, who was to cause 
his head to be again shorn, and to read what was inscribed 
upon it. 9 



7 Herod, lib. viii. s. 128. 8 Herod, lib. v. s. 95. 

9 Humboldt informs us, in his " Vues Pittoresques des Cordilleres," that, 
in order to maintain a post communication between the shores of the South 
Pacific and the province of Jaen de Brancamoros, Indians are employed, who 
during two days descend the river Guancabamba, or Chamaya, and afterwards 
the Amazon river, as far as Tomependa. The courier, before he commits him- 
self to the water, wraps the few letters with which he is charged monthly, 
sometimes in a handkerchief, and at other times in a species of drawers called 
guayuco, and this he disposes in the form of a turban round his head. In this 
turban he also places the large knife or cutlass with which he is always provided, 
less as a means of defence than to assist him in making his way through the under- 
wood, for the Guancabamba is not navigable throughout, by reason of the great 
number of falls and rapids : these the postman passes by land, taking again to 
the water as soon as all danger from them is over. To assist him in swim- 
ming, the Indian provides himself with a log of very light wood, generally the 
trunk of the bombax. These men, who are known in the country as the 



44 CONVEYANCE BY POSTS. 

The scytale of the Spartans was a notable contrivance. 
Two small cylinders of wood were smoothed and polished in 
the same manner, and made to agree with the utmost exact- 
ness in length and thickness. One of these was given to the 
general about to take the field, and its fellow retained by the 
magistrates at home. Round one of these pieces of wood 
a leather strap was wound, the edges touching each other 
in every part with a perfect adjustment, and ending exactly 
with the wood at each extremity. When a secret despatch 
was to be sent, it was written along the cylinder, and over 
the places where the edges of the strap were in contact. 
When the strap was removed, the letters and words were 
detached so as to fall into illegible disorder and confusion; 
and in this state it was sent to the general, who alone could 
make out the sense, by winding the strap round his own cylin- 
der, which brought again all the letters into their proper 
places, making them coincide as they had done when they 
were written on the cylinder in the hands of the council at 
Sparta; and thus secrecy was maintained between the 
parties. 10 

It was customary with the Roman generals when writing 
to the senate the news of a victory gained by their valour 
and conduct, to fold their letters in laurel leaves. A report 
had reached Rome of a defeat supposed to have been sus- 
tained by Posthumius in a battle with the iEqui, which 

swimming couriers — el coreo que nada — have no occasion to encumber them- 
selves with provisions, their wants being abundantly supplied by the hospitable 
inhabitants of the cottages which they pass on the banks of the rivers. A 
similar mode of securing the letters entrusted to their care, is adopted by the 
couriers of Hindostan : when compelled, as they frequently are, to cross a river 
by swimming, they deposit the letters in the turban, and thus convey them safely 
to the opposite shore. One of these men having failed to make his appearance 
at the appointed time, messengers were despatched to search for him. On the 
banks of a river which flowed across their route lay the dead body of an 
alligator, with its jaws distended as if it had suffered a violent death. They 
proceeded to examine it more closely, and discovered the head of the unfortunate 
courier completely choking up the passage of the throat, so that the animal had 
died from strangulation ; the letter was found uninjured in the turban. 

10 The scytale of Sparta is explained in Aul. Gell. Noct. Att. lib. xvii. c. 9. 



CONVEYANCE BY POSTS. 45 

spread through the city great consternation. But the tide of 
success was turned ; and the Romans achieved so complete a 
victory as nearly to annihilate the army of iEqui. Litterse lau- 
reatae announced the event, and proclaimed that the enemy's 
army was extinguished. " iEquorum exercitum deletum." n 

It seems a little strange that, as the institution of posts had 
existed so long in the eastern parts of the world, the Romans 
should have been so long without them, as it does not appear 
that even in the time of Cicero any public provision had been 
made for the conveyance of letters of any description. The 
carriage was committed to some private hand, or special 
messenger, usually a slave, who was called tabellarius. Men 
of high condition often employed slaves, or freedmen, to 
write their letters, called amanuenses; which domestics were 
held in great consideration, as persons of a very confidential 
character. Sometimes, indeed, the proper and expedient time 
for the delivery of the letter was left to the discretion of the 
tabellarius. Cicero, in a letter to Brutus, thus writes: " Per- 
magni interest, quo tibi haec tempore epistola reddita sit: 
utrum cum sollicitudinis aliquid haberes, an cum ab omni 
molestia vacuus esses, ltaque ei pr^ecepi, quern ad te misi, ut 
tempus observaret epistolae tibi reddendae. Nam quemadmo- 
dum coram qui ad nos intempestive adeunt, molesti saepe 
sunt ; sic epistolae ofTendunt non loco redditae. Si autem, ut 
spero, nihil te perturbat, nihil impedit: et ille, cui mandavi, 
satis scite, et commode tempus ad te cepit adeundi; confido 
me, quod velim, facile a te impetraturum." 12 

It appears, however, from Suetonius, that Augustus Caesar 
felt the inconvenience arising from the want of a public pro- 
vision for the transmission of important despatches ; and, that 
in order to establish a speedy intercourse with the provinces 
of the empire, he first stationed young men at moderate inter- 
vals along the high roads, and afterwards chariots, to facilitate 
the transport of letters, and oral intelligence. 13 And this 

11 Tit. Liv. 1. v. c. 28. 

12 Cic. ad Fam. lib. xi. ep. xvi. ; and see Horat. lib. i. ep. xiii. 

13 Sueton. August. 



46 CONVEYANCE BY POSTS. 

continued to be the practice of his successors. The word 
post is Roman, if we suppose it, as is probable, to be derived 
from positus, the carriers being placed, or posted, at certain 
settled distances from each other. It does not seem, however, 
that regular relays of horses were part of the institution. 
The messengers seized any horses they could find, till Trajan 
appointed regular horse stations for the conveyance of des- 
patches and intelligence, of which a particular mention is 
made in the Theodosian code, " de Cursu Publico." It was 
not, however, till in quite modern times, that this most useful 
provision came under a regular and general management, so as 
to be a system of popular economy and common convenience. 
Lewis Hornigk, who has furnished, in the German language, 
a full and accurate treatise on posts, tells us that they were 
first settled on this large scale, by the Count de Taxis, at his 
own expense ; in acknowledgment of which the Emperor 
Matthias, in 1616, gave him in fief the charge of postmaster 
under him and his successors. 14 



14 Rollin relates that France was indebted for the great conveniency of the 
post to the University of Paris. That University being at the time of its insti- 
tution the only one in the kingdom, and having great numbers of scholars re- 
sorting to it from all parts of the country, took into its employment messengers, 
whose business it was not only to bring clothes, silver, and gold for the students, 
but alse to carry bags of law proceedings, informations, and inquests ; and, in 
process of time, to conduct all sorts of persons, indifferently, to and from Paris, 
finding horses and diet ; as also to convey letters, parcels, and packets, for the 
public, as well as the University. In the University registers of the faculty of 
arts, these messengers are often styled nuncii volantes. So that, it would appear, 
that the state is indebted to the University of Paris for the commencement of 
this establishment of messengers and letter-carriers ; and these offices seem to 
have been at first maintained at the cost and charge of the University. 

There were never any ordinary royal messengers till Henry III. first estab- 
lished them in the year 1576, by his edict; granting to them the same rights 
and privileges as the kings, his predecessors, had conceded to the messengers 
of the University. According to the authority from which this statement is 
taken, the University never had any other fund or support than the profits 
arising from the post-office ; and it was upon the foundation of the same re- 
venue, that Lewis XV., by his decree of the Council of State, 14th of April, 
1719, and by his letters patent, registered in Parliament, and in the Chamber 
of Accounts, ordered, that in all the colleges of the said University, the 



CONVEYANCE BY POSTS. 47 

students should be taught gratis, and to that end for the time to come, appro- 
priated to the University one twenty-eighth part of the revenue arising from 
the general lease or farm of the posts and messengers of France, which twenty - 
eighth amounted in that year to 184,000 livres, or thereabouts, (£8,500 
sterling.) 

In our own country, we find but little trace of anything like a post estab- 
lishment till about the twenty-third year of our Queen Elizabeth. In the 
early stages of society, private persons departed but seldom from their homes 
and families, and the business of commerce was transacted with very little 
complication. The king's letters and writs, to summon his barons, command 
his sheriffs, and collect his revenues, were carried by special messengers, 
through the medium of a general establishment, for the conduct and expenses 
of which the charges and payments make frequent items in the records of the 
royal household ; which practice was imitated by the more powerful nobles, 
who had their nuncii among their retainers. For these nuncii, by degrees, fixed 
posts and stations were established, for the maintenance of regular relays ; and 
in the time of Edward IV., during the war with Scotland, certain posts, twenty 
miles apart, are said to have been fixed for a succession of carriers, who were 
so well equipped and furnished with means as to expedite the conveyance at 
the rate of one hundred miles per diem. 

By statute 2 & 3 Edw. VI. c. 3, " the rate for the hire of post-horses for the 
conveyance of letters was fixed at one penny per mile ; and in 1581, we first 
read of a postmaster in England. James I. appointed a chief postmaster, 
for the superintendence of the foreign post-office department, who was to have 
the sole taking up, sending and conveying of all packets and letters concerning 
his service or business, to be despatched into foreign parts, with power to grant 
moderate salaries." To these postmasters, the privilege of carrying letters on 
behalf of the public was confined, and protected by exclusive and inhibitory 
enactments. In 1644, chiefly on the plea of establishing a quick communica- 
tion between the dominant power in the state and the Parliamentary forces, 
regular post-stages were set up and fixed in various parts of the kingdom, and 
Edmund Prideaux, a member of the House of Commons, was made master 
of the post and couriers. But, in 1655, an act was passed " to settle the 
postage of England, Scotland, and Ireland," which enacts, that l ' there shall 
be one general Post-office, and one officer, styled the Postmaster-General of 
England, and Comptroller of the Post-office, who was to have the horsing of 
all posts, and persons riding in post, the prices whereof were fixed; and 
all other persons were forbidden to set up and employ any foot-posts, horse- 
posts, or pacquet boats." These provisions were confirmed after the restora- 
tion of the monarchy. A penny post was afterwards, in 1683, established for 
the metropolis, and a long series of Parliamentary arrangements succeeded 
from the reign of Queen Anne to the present era. 



48 



CHAPTER VI. 

LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 

If the letters given to the public as the letters of Phalaris, 
the tyrant of Agrigentum, were genuine, they would deservedly 
rank among the most curious monuments of remote antiquity. 
The familiar correspondence of so remarkable a personage, 
contemporary with Solon and Pythagoras, would so approxi- 
mate us to those ancient times, that to him who delights in 
comparing and contrasting the manners of mankind at periods 
widely distant from each other, nothing could offer a more 
rational entertainment. Letters that would carry us back to 
the distance of nearly five hundred years from the age of 
Cicero, whose correspondence presents the earliest approved 
specimens of this kind, would interest a mind disposed to 
inquiries into the moral and social history of our species, as 
much, at least, as anything that remains to us of authentic 
antiquity. 

Sir William Temple, whose own compositions in the same 
department of literature, by some, are esteemed among the 
best models in our language, in his " Essay upon Ancient and 
Modern Learning," written, indeed, under a strong bias in 
preference of the ancients, thus expresses himself on the sub- 
ject : " It may, perhaps, be further affirmed in favour of the 
ancients, that the oldest books we have, are still, in their kind, 
the best. The two most ancient that I know of in prose, among 
those we call profane authors, are " iEsop's Fables," and 
" Phalaris's Epistles," both living near the same time, which 
was that of Cyrus and Pythagoras. As the first has been agreed 
by all ages since, for the greatest master in his kind, and all 
others of that sort have been but imitators of his original ; so" 



LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 49 

I think the epistles of Phalaris to have more race, more 
spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others I have 
ever seen, either ancient or modern. I know several learned 
men (or that usually pass for such, under the name of critics,) 
have not esteemed them genuine ; and Politian, with some 
others, have attributed them to Lucian ; but I think he must 
have little skill in painting, that cannot find out this to be an 
original. Such diversity of passions,, upon such variety of 
actions, and passages of life and government ; such freedom 
of thought ; such boldness of expression ; such bounty to his 
friends ; such scorn of his enemies ; such honour of learned 
men; such esteem of good; such knowledge of life ; such 
contempt of death ; with such fierceness of nature, and cruelty 
of revenge, — could never be represented but by him that pos- 
sessed them. And I esteem Lucian to have been no more 
capable of writing than of acting what Phalaris did. In all 
one wrote you find the scholar and the sophist ; and all the 
other, the tyrant and the commander." 1 

That such praise from such authority should have brought 
the epistles into great credit and popularity among scholars, 
is no matter of wonder. 

The Essay of Sir William was published in 1690, and in 
1695 a new edition of the epistles, given to the world as the 
epistles of Phalaris, of which a Manuscript was preserved in 
the.Royal Library, was published at Oxford, by the Honourable 
Charles Boyle, then a student of Christ Church, under the 
auspices of the Dean of the College, and with the assistance of 



1 Franciscus Aretinus, who has edited these epistles with a Latin transla- 
tion, thus speaks of them in his Prooemium : " Perlege, quaeso, has epistolas 
diligenter ; et si illius considerabis ingenium invenies in Phalaride nullum 
simulationis argumentum. Invenies maximi animi virum qui neminem for- 
midet neminem ad gratiam alloquatur. Invenies apertae frontis hominem ; 
qui quod animo id etiam ore habere videatur; qui nullam boni viri opinionem 
aucupetur; quippe qui et gloriam, et omnium adulationem recuset atque 
contemnat. Visne in deos, in patriam, pietatis exemplum, habes Phalarim. 
Vkoe studiorum, musarumque amatorem, Phalarim intuere. Caeterum his 
epistolis nihil gravius, acutius, pressius, et Graecorum et Latinorum pace 
dixerim, in hoc scribendi genere invenies." Ed. 1471. 

E 



50 LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 

the editor's friends. It was imputed to Bentley, then the 
Keeper of the King's Library, that he did not permit the book- 
seller of the editor to have the possession of the Manuscript 
a sufficiently long time for his examination ; and an allusion 
to this alleged illiberality, contained in the preface to the 
work, followed by a refusal to cancel the leaf, upon an ex- 
planation from Bentley, engendered those acrimonious feel- 
ings which found their full indulgence in the controversy 
concerning the genuineness of these epistles ; and a mere ques- 
tion of literary research became the pretext for waging war 
upon each other's reputation. 

In 1694 appeared the first edition of " Wotton's Reflections 
upon Ancient and Modern Learning." As an appendix to 
this work, Bentley had promised the author to furnish a dis- 
sertation, in which he was to shew the letters of Phalaris, as 
well as iEsop's Fables, to be spurious. He was prevented by 
some circumstances from performing his engagement ; but 
on Mr. Wotton's proceeding with a new edition, he was called 
upon to fulfil his promise; which was done, by his supplying 
to this edition a dissertation upon the epistles of Phalaris, 
Themistocles, Socrates, Euripides, and others. This second 
edition of Mr. Wotton's work, accordingly, appeared in 1697, 
with the promised dissertation annexed ; and in the following 
year came out the answer from the exasperated editors of the 
epistles, the greater part of which was considered as the 
production of Atterbury. This answer, which, though not 
without some learning and ingenuity, was more remarkable 
for its asperity and raillery, soon reached a second edition. 
The provocation was great, and the retaliation upon the part 
of Bentley was more than, commensurate. In 1699 appeared 
the work of that great scholar and critic, entitled, "A 
Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris: with an Answer 
to the Objections of the Honourable Charles Boyle;" a 
monument of learned and critical disquisition, and standing 
at the head of all labours of this kind. It terminated the 
contention; and did so, as the best scholars have judged, by 
making a reply impossible. In his answer to Dr. Bentley's 



LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 51 

dissertations on this subject, the editor had declared that his 
doubts about the authority of the epistles had been thereby 
much lessened; and that if the author of that dissertation 
should write once more upon the subject, perhaps the point 
would be clear to him. Dr. Bentley produced his second 
dissertation ; Mr. Boyle and his friends were silent; but the 
learned world have not considered that their silence proceeded 
from their conviction of the genuineness of the epistles. 

Dr. Bentley observes in the introduction to his second dis- 
sertation, that to forge and counterfeit books, and to father 
them upon great names, has been a practice almost as old as 
literature, and refers us to a passage in the works of Galen, to 
support his statement, that " this practice was most in fashion 
when the kings of Pergamus and Alexandria, rivalling one 
another in the magnificence and copiousness of their libraries, 
gave great rates for any treatises that carried the names of 
celebrated authors." What was then done chiefly for lucre, 
was afterwards done out of glory and affectation, as an exercise 
of style, and an ostentation of wit. " Some," says again 
the same great critic, "confessed that they feigned letters and 
answers as a mere trial of their skill ; but most of them took 
the other way, and, concealing their own names, put off their 
copies for originals ; preferring that silent pride, and fraudu- 
lent pleasure, though it was to die with them, before an 
honest commendation from posterity for being good imitators." 
"Epistolse," says Erasmus, " quas nobis reliquit nescio quis 
Bruti nomine, nomine Pkalaridis, nomine Senecae et Pauli, quid 
aliud censeri possunt quam declamatiunculae?" 2 "Such," 
says Lord Shaftesbury, speaking of letters which were written 
to serve as exercises or specimens of the wit of their com- 
poser, u were those infinite numbers of Greek and Latin 
epistles written by the ancient sophists, grammarians, and 
rhetoricians ; where we find the real character, and the genuine 
style and manner, of the corresponding parties sometimes 
imitated ; but at other times not so much as aimed at, nor 
any measures of historical truth preserved." 

2 Erasm. Epist. lib. i. epist. 1. 



52 LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 

Who was the sophist that composed the epistles passing 
under the name of Phalaris, the tyrant of Agrigentum, does 
nowhere appear. Politian, as noticed in the laudatory pas- 
sage above produced from Sir William Temple, ascribed 
them to Lueian : an unfounded surmise as well in the judg- 
ment of Sir William Temple, as in that of most other men of 
discernment ; Lueian being considered by the learned knight 
as incompetent to the work, and by others, including Dr. 
Bentley, as disgraced by the imputation. But the letters in 
question have obtained credit with some persons of literary- 
rank; and even Selden, as Dr. Bentley has observed, drew an 
argument on a point of chronology from them in his treatise 
on the Arundelian marbles. 3 Stobseus, Suidas, and Johannes 
Tzetzes, among the ancients, make mention of the letters of 
Phalaris; and they, as they intimate no doubts concerning 
them, may be concluded to have regarded them as authentic 
originals. But the supporters of the letters have all been 
silenced and confounded by the learning and sagacity of the 
great critic, who, by proofs drawn from the depths of his own 
recondite erudition, and displayed and reasoned upon in his 
characteristic style of conscious superiority, has exposed the 
cheat, and stripped the tyrant of his false plumage. 

Dr. Bentley's objections to the title of the letters of Pha- 
laris to be received as genuine productions, are chiefly drawn 
from their chronological inconsistencies, which appear to 
have escaped the sagacity of other scholars. But these were 
not the only indications of the fraud. It was decided by 
other tests familiar to the experienced eye of the great critic. 
And such was the depth of his acquaintance with the progress, 
the stages, the varieties, and the whole idiomatic structure of 
the Greek language ; such his skill in the application of his 
knowledge, and his general powers of reasoning, that every 
covering of art and disguise was effectually removed, and the 
imposition placed beyond all controversy or doubt. 4 As 

3 P. 106. 

* " Bentleius in dissertatione de Phalaridis, Theraistoclis, Socratis, Euripi- 
dis, aliorumque Epistolis, et de fabulis iEsopi ; in responsione quoque, qua 



LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 53 

Suidas had said that Phalaris wrote very admirable letters, 
ETTiGToXac Qavfiaaiaq iravv, and Stobseus and Tzetzes had 
quoted several of them as genuine, it became of no small 
importance to historic truth, that the world should be un- 
deceived on this subject; and it therefore owes much to Dr. 
Bentley for his clear exposition of the fraud attempted to be 
practised upon it by the anonymous impostor, and the per- 
tinacious support given to the delusion by men of great re- 
puted learning. 

The anachronisms pointed out by the dissertation are 
numerous. I will select a few, and first, respecting the letter 
to Pythagoras. The chronological dates assigned in ancient 
authors to both Phalaris and Pythagoras are various. But 
the preponderance of authority places the birth of Pythagoras 
at Olymp. xliii.; his aKfxt} or flourishing period at Olymp. lxiL; 
and his death at Olymp. lxviii ; and Phalaris, according to an 
account assigning to him the earliest period, begun his tyranny 
over the Agrigentines Olymp. xxxi. 2, and ended it Olymp. 
xxxviii. 2; which statement with respect to Phalaris, if true, 
makes it impossible for him to have written the letter in ques- 
tion to Pythagoras. The account most favourable to the pre- 
tended letters represents the government of the tyrant to 
have commenced Olymp. liii. 4, and ended with his existence, 
Oymp. lvii. 3 ; according to which latter statement, though 
the tyrant and the philosopher were contemporary, a cor- 
respondence between them was very improbable. 

In the epistle to the people of Enna, a city of Sicily, 
demanding from them the repayment of money which they 
had borrowed from him, Phalaris tells them, that the Hy- 
blenses and Phintienses, or people of Phintia, had promised 
to lend him money at interest; whereas, from a fragment 
of Diodorus, an accurate writer, a Sicilian, and of course 
well acquainted with the history of his country, it appears, 
that Phintias, a tyrant of Agrigentum, first built the city 

dissertationem suam vindicat a censura Caroli Boyle, sic evicit has epistolas 
sub nomine Phalaridis a recentiore sophista fuisse confictas, ut ea res amplius 
in controversiam cadere non possit." Ed. Lannep. Praef. Valckenaer. v. 



54 LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 

of Phintia, calling it by his own name, Olyrnp. cxxv. above 
two hundred and seventy years after the death of Pha- 
laris. Add to this, that the author of the epistles men- 
tions the Geloans and Phintienses as different nations, exist- 
ing at the same time ; whereas Phintia was built after Gela 
was rased and dispeopled, and was the place to which the 
residue of the Geloans were transplanted. 

Again, in another letter, Stesichorus the poet is threatened 
by the tyrant for raising money and soldiers against him at 
Aluntium and Alsesa ; but from the same Diodorus it appears 
that AlaBsa was 6rst built by Archonides, a Sicilian, Olymp. 
xciv. 2, or, as others say, about two years before, making a 
difference of one hundred and forty years between the latest 
period of Phalaris and the existence of the city of which he 
is made to speak ; for though there might be other cities of 
that name in Sicily, the Alsesa of Archonides must have been 
the same as that alluded to in the epistles, as it was on the 
same coast, and only a small distance from Himera and 
Aluntium. 

Polyclitus, the Messenian physician, had performed a cure 
upon Phalaris, and the tyrant expresses his sense of the 
obligation in a letter to him upon the subject; giving at the 
same time an account of the presents he was about to make 
him; among which were ten pairs of Thericlean cups. These 
cups had their name from the inventor and fabricator of 
them, Thericles, a Corinthian potter; who, as we learn from 
Athenaeus, was contemporary with Aristophanes the come- 
dian. Now the plays left us of Aristophanes are known to 
have been written between the eighty-ninth and ninty-seventh 
Olympiads, an interval of thirty-six years, the first of which 
dates one hundred and twenty years after the death of Pha- 
laris. 

In a letter to Timonactus, the tyrant exults in the victory 
obtained by him over the Zancleans, and in a preceding letter 
he writes to the Messenians, having also before addressed 
Polyclitus, his physician, as a Messenian ; from which it would 
appear that, in Phalaris's time, Zancle and Messana were two 



LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 55 

different towns. But Strabo tells us, that Messana was before 
called Zancle; and Herodotus and Diodorus say the same 
thing. The fact is also affirmed by Thucydides, who says, 
that the Zancleans were driven out by the Samians and other 
Ionians that fled from the Medes about Olymp. lxx. 4, and 
that ov TToWd) vvTEpov, not long afterwards, Anaxilas, king 
of Rhegium, drove the Samians themselves out, and called 
the town Messana, from the Peloponnesian Messana, the 
country of his ancestors. 5 Of the same Anaxilas, Diodorus 
records the death as happening Olymp. lxxvi. 1, after having 
reigned eighteen years ; so that, taking the death of Phalaris 
to have happened Olymp. lvii. 3, fifty years elapsed between 
that event and the change of the name of Zancle to that 
of Messana. In confirmation of which argument, it is 
worthy of notice, that Simonides, the lyric poet, is recorded 
to have made an epigram on his success in obtaining the 
prize of song 6 at the age of eighty, when Adimantus was 
Archon at Athens; and from the Parian Chronicle we know 
that Adimantus was Archon Olymp. lxxv. 3. Now, that 
Simonides was contemporary with Anaxilas, is thus estab- 
lished : Heraclides has preserved the record, that when 
Anaxilas, the Messenian, the tyrant of Rhegium, had ob- 
tained the victory with his mules at Olympia, he gave a 
treat to the spectators, and Simonides made a copy of verses 
upon his victory. Heraclides was a scholar of Aristotle, in 
whose Treatise on Rhetoric the following story occurs : That 
when one who had got the prize at Olympia with his chariot 
of mules offered Simonides a small fee to make an ode upon 
his victory, he pretended he would not disgrace his muse by 
so mean a subject as mules: but when the person advanced 
a great price, he could presently call them, not mules, but 
the daughters of mares. Xaiper azXXoTrodwv OvyaTapeg lirirwv. 
The person not named by Aristotle is shewn by his scholar to 

5 Thucyd. vi. 4, 5. 

6 Hp%£ fisv A^mavroQ AQrjvaioiQ, 6t IviKa 

AvrioxiQ <pv\ri SaidaXtov rpnroda. See Schol. on Hermogenes, p. 410; 
and see Val. Max. viii. 7. 



56 LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 

have been Anaxilas, who first changed the name of Zancle to 
that of Messana, above half a century after Phalaris is 
made to entitle it by the latter appellation, and to treat it as 
a distinct city. 7 Dr. Bentley seems to have made it suffi- 
ciently clear, that Pausanias had committed an error in 
stating that Zancle was first called Messana at Olymp. 
xxix. ; but supposing Pausanias correct, the advocates of the 
epistles could derive no advantage from his authority ; for 
then how did it happen that the tyrant, who lived above a 
hundred years after, made mention both of Zancle and Mes- 
sana, thus retaining the former name, and splitting the city 
into two ? 

Diodorus relates, that some Sicilians planted themselves, 
Olymp. xcvi. 1, upon a hill called Taurus, near the ruins of 
Naxus, and built a new town there, which they called 
Tauromenium, airo Tavpog Km jU£vav, from their settlement 
upon Taurus ; and about forty years after this, Olymp. cv. 3, 
one Andromachus, a Tauromenite, gathered all the remnant 
of the old Naxians that were dispersed through Sicily, and 
persuaded them to fix there. 8 But the tyrant, in Epist. 
lxxxv. writes, that he had utterly routed the Taurotnenites ; 
and the same name is given them in several other of the pre- 
tended epistles ; whereas in the days of Phalaris, this people 
was called by no other name than Naxians. Thus Pliny, 
" Taurominium quae antea Naxos;" 9 and Solinus, " Tau- 
rominium quam prisci Naxon vocabant." 10 If it has been 
called Taurominium by Porphyry, 11 in his life of Pytha- 
goras, and by Jamblicus, 12 and perhaps others of a compara- 
tively modern date, yet this may clearly be explained by 
referring to the common use of the prolepsis ; whereas by 



7 The victory of Anaxilas could not have taken place before Olymp. lxx., 
as it appears from Pausanias that the aTrrjvr], or the chariot drawn by mules, 
was not used at the Olympic races till that date. Pausan. p. 155, vfiwvovg 
avn i7nro)v. They were soon left off. 

8 Diod. lib. xiv. p. 282. 9 Plin. iii. 8. 

10 Solin. c. xi. (" Colonia Taurominia quam," &c. cap. v. ed. Salm. — D.) 
" Vita Pythag. p. 169. ,2 Jamb. p. 128, 



LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 57 

Phalaris it could only have been so called by a prophetic 
anticipation. In truth, the town of Naxos was destroyed by 
Dionysius of Syracuse, Olymp. xciv. 2, 13 and seven years 
afterwards Tauromenium was founded, Olymp. xcvi. 1. That 
the city should, both by Herodotus and Thucydides, be called 
Naxos, is in consistency with the above stated chronology. 

There are several moral sentences scattered over the epis- 
tles, which were borrowed from later writings, and which the 
diffusive learning of Dr. Bentley enabled him to trace and 
identify ; on Xoyog epyov gklcl irapa rote (raxppovzaTEpoig we- 
TricFTevrai — that " wise men take words for the shadow of 
things," was a saying of Democritus, 14 who lived above a 
hundred years after Phalaris. Qvr^rovg yap ovraq aOavarov 
opyr\v £\ HV > ***£ (Jxktl tivzq, ov irpodYjKu — " mortal men ought 
not to entertain immortal anger ;" a passage in the fragment 
of the " Philoctetes of Euripides," 15 and not written till about 
one hundred and twenty years after the death of Phalaris, is 
made use of by him. Epist. xxiii. is addressed to Pythagoras, 
and we find the doctrine and institution of that great person 
there designated by the name of philosophy ; a word invented 
by Pythagoras himself, and not likely to have been used as a 
word of course by this correspondent. 

The use of the word tragedy in Epistle lxiii. could not 
escape the scrutiny of Dr. Bentley, who is thereby led into a 
lengthened discussion concerning the age of tragedy in 
Greece, in which he most elaborately shews that it owed its 
origin to Thespis, whose first performance was about the 61st 
Olymp.; more than twelve years after the death of Phalaris. 
There is something too in the silly complaint of the tyrant, 
that Aristolochus was writing tragedies against him, that has 
sufficiently the air of imposture; for, as the critic observes, " it 
borders upon absurdity to suppose a man, while living, to be 
the argument of a tragedy." 

The dialect in which these epistles are written, is not over- 
looked. The language is Attic, the favourite idiom of the 

13 Diod. p. 246. " Diog. Laert. in Vit. Democ. 

15 Stobaeus, tit. xx. tripi opyqg. 



58 LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 

sophists, but not of Sicily, wherein the Doric tongue was 
generally spoken and written. That the Attic should be, as 
according to these epistles it would seem to have been, not 
only the court dialect of Agrigentum, but also that in which 
domestic and ordinary matters were transacted, appears 
very strange, especially as it was the idiom of a decided 
democracy which, in the days of Phalaris himself, had driven 
out Pisistratus, for no other reason than because he bore the 
name of tyrant. And even in Astypalsea, where Phalaris 
was said to have been born, no other idiom than the Doric 
can be reasonably supposed to have been in use, as it lay 
among a cluster of islands where the Doric was the dialect. 
And if Astypalaea was in Crete, where the defenders of the 
epistles would place it, still the argument follows him there, 
as the Doric was as much the language of Crete as of Sicily. 
Besides all this, " in the time of the true Phalaris the Attic 
dialect was not yet in fashion, there being at that time no 
Attic prose in existence, except in Draco's and Solon's laws ; 
and in but one piece or two in verse." In addition to which 
remark, it is observed, that the use of certain Greek words 
in a sense in which they never were used but by writers of 
a late date, manifestly betrays the hand of the sophist. 

The use of the word 6vya-rip in the sense of maiden; the 
confusion of the word /aeXog with EXsyeiov ; the application of 
TTpovoia, which in the days of Phalaris expressed only human 
prudence and foresight, to denote the providence of God — a 
force first given to it by Plato — and of oroi^eta, to signify the 
elements in a philosophical sense, which, until it was so used 
by Plato, had the sense only of the grammatical elements, or 
the first constituents of language, 16 — go no little way towards 
fixing a character of fraud upon these plausible letters. 

In treating of the matter and business of the letters im- 
puted to Phalaris, the censures of the critic may, perhaps, 
be chargeable with some excess. It may be said of them 
generally, that they have a sort of fictitious aspect, and a 
style and character which favour the suspicion of imposture ; 

:6 See the long and learned note in Lennep. 142. 



LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 59 

but it is hardly doing them justice to treat them as altogether 
destitute of spirit and ingenuity. The furious determination 
of the people of Himera to wage a ruinous war with Catana, 
about the ashes of the poet Stesichorus, who had died and 
was buried at the last named city; and their application to 
the tyrant of Agrigentum for his assistance, who advises, by 
way of compromise, that Himera shall build a temple to the 
poet, and Catana remain possessed of his tomb, cannot be 
regarded but as an insipid and extravagant story, the off- 
spring of an imbecile imagination. And what more can be 
said in behalf of those epistles which relate the supposed appli- 
cation by Nicocles to the tyrant, for his good offices towards 
obtaining for him from the same poet, Stesichorus, a copy of 
his verses upon his deceased wife, Clearista; upon which 
errand a special messenger is sent to Agrigentum, a distance 
of one hundred miles, to procure a request to be forwarded 
one hundred miles further to the author of the verses ? 

The rewards which Phalaris is made to bestow upon his 
physician for his successful treatment of a malady under 
which the tyrant was labouring, have the air of romance, 
and, naturally enough, put Dr. Bentley in mind of the lupins 
with which the actors in comedies so easily made their pay- 
ments, and bestowed their bounties. Gold was in those 
days a scarce commodity in Greece. It was in Phalaris's 
time that the Spartans, having been commanded by the 
oracle to gild the face of Apollo's statue with gold, and not 
being able to find any of that metal in Greece, were ordered 
to buy it of Croesus, king of Lydia; which was done: but 
scarce as it was, the gratitude of Phalaris for the cure of his 
distemper, overflowed in a liberality that, besides the donation 
of ten pairs of large Thericlean cups, twenty slaves, fifty 
thousand Attic drachms, an annual salary as great as was 
paid to the chief officers of the army and fleet, could not be 
satisfied without the further compliment of four goblets of re- 
fined gold, and eleven silver bowls of elaborate workmanship. 

When the temple of Delphi was plundered, gold was yet so 
scarce in Greece, that Philip of Macedon having a little 



60 LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 

golden cup, weighing only about half a pound, troy weight, 
put it under his pillow every night. 

It must be owned, therefore, that never was medical skill 
so royally rewarded ; and that at a time when, in Greece, the 
attendance and care of physicians appear to have been but 
unhandsomely requited ; for as we read in the Third Book 
of Herodotus, the celebrated Democedes, the Crotonian, but 
a few years after the death of Phalaris, was hired for a whole 
year by the iEginseans, for a single talent ; for the next year, 
by the Athenians, for a hundred minse, that is, a talent and two 
thirds; and in the year following, by Polycrates, the tyrant of 
Samos, for two talents. 

On these and other like evidences of fraud, Dr. Bentley has 
spared neither wit nor learning. His style of ridicule, as it is 
entirely his own, so is it above competition for scholastic 
humour and controversial raillery. His finishing topic is the 
long oblivion in which the letters must have reposed between 
the time of their composition and the date of their discovery 
— a thousand years ; covering a period which may be regarded 
as the greatest and longest reign of learning that the world has 
seen : in all which time these famous letters were never heard 
of. " They first came to notice," says Dr. Bentley, "in the 
dusk and twilight which preceded a long night of ignorance." 

During this interval various writers tell us things of Pha- 
laris which are entirely at variance with the supposed letters. 
There was also within that period frequent controversy re- 
specting the bull of Phalaris. Timseus, the Sicilian historian, 
who wrote in the 128th Olympiad, treats the whole as a 
fiction, notwithstanding all that had been said of it by 
historians and poets. He, therefore, could have heard nothing 
of the letters, or, if he had heard of them, he passed them by 
in silent contempt. But it is still a stronger fact, that Poly- 
bius and Diodorus, who both endeavour to refute Timaeus, 
and establish the story of the bull, do neither of them call 
these letters to their aid, which, had they been in existence, 
and their existence known, would have furnished them with 
a decisive argument ; and one of these writers was a Sicilian 
born. 






LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO'PHALARIS. Gl 

The letters of Phalaris to his wife and his son, are agree- 
able specimens, or rather imitations, of conjugal and parental 
tenderness ; and one could almost have wished the collection 
to have been proved genuine, for their sakes ; but, unfortu- 
nately, they are themselves among the evidences of the fraud. 
The fifty-first letter makes the wife of Phalaris to have been 
poisoned at Astypalsea, soon after her husband's flight ; and 
the sixty-ninth shews her again alive in Crete, many years 
after, when Phalaris had long reigned in Agrigentum; and 
assuredly the current report of the tyrant's having devoured 
his own son, alluded to and not discredited by Aristotle, 17 
could never have prevailed, if the letters in question had 
been genuine compositions. There are five supposed to have 
been written by the tyrant to his son Paurola, and two to his 
wife Eurythia, all of which have certain turns of elegant senti- 
ment and expression, which little comport with the qualities 
generally imputed to him. He has also credit for several other 
very agreeable letters to his friends. He is made to write as 
follows, to one of his generals, to console him for the loss of 
his son, who was slain in battle : 

PHALARIS TO LACRITUS. 

For the greatness of your sorrow for the death of your son, 
all manner of allowance ought to be made. I cordially 
sympathise with you, and feel the misfortune as my own ; 
since I look upon myself as standing in a sort of near relation 
to him. Although I am in the habit, perhaps, of viewing 
these events with a firmer mind than others, being persuaded 
that it answers no good purpose to indulge in immoderate 
grief. There is much to console you in your present distress ; 
first, that he died in battle, fighting valiantly for his country ; 
then, that his destiny rewarded him with so glorious a death 
at the moment of victory : and lastly, that, having lived a 
blameless life, he sealed his virtue by his death. For while 
a virtuous man continues in life, whether he will maintain his 
character, or sink below it, is uncertain ; since casualties, 

17 Aristot. Eth. Nicom. vii. 5. 



62 LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 

rather than prudent counsels, influence the minds of men. 
But he that passes unimpeached out of life, is established in 
his glorious estate beyond the possibility of change. Con- 
sidering, therefore, his perseverance in maintaining his virtue 
and integrity to the last moment of his existence as a due 
return for his birth and bringing up, reward his memory, by 
bearing the loss of him with fortitude and composure. 



PHALARIS TO HIS WIFE EURYTH1A. 

I feel myself to owe you, my Eurythia, the greatest gra- 
titude, both on my own account and on the account of the 
son to whom we have given birth. On my own account, 
because, when I was a banished man, you chose rather to 
remain in your bereaved state, than accept any other husband, 
though many were desirous of being united to you : on 
our son's account, because you have been a mother, a nurse, 
and a father to him, nor have preferred any husband to Pha- 
laris, nor any other son to Paurola. Persist in this kind feel- 
ing towards your husband and son, and especially towards 
the latter, until he shall attain the age of a ripe discretion, 
and no longer need the guidance of either father or mother. 
I press these things upon you with so much earnestness, not 
as having any distrust of the mother of my child, and espe- 
cially of such a mother, but as actuated by the fears and 
anxieties natural to a father. You are able from your own 
parental experiences, and from your sympathy with a father's 
feelings for his child, to pardon the importunity of this letter. 
Farewell. 

PHALARIS TO PAUROLA HIS SON. 

It behoves you, my son, to cherish the greatest affection for 
both your parents, and to hold them in the highest respect, 
for a son owes a debt of piety and gratitude to those from 
whom he has derived his existence, and from whom he has 
received so many benefits ; but rather neglect your father, 
than your mother ; for the care and assiduity which a father 
exercises towards his children in their nurture and bringing 



LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARTS. 63 

up, cannot possibly equal those of the mother. She, indeed, 
besides bringing forth the child, and imparting to it its first 
nourishment, has sustained innumerable other anxieties in 
rearing it. But the father has the enjoyment of his child, 
after he has reached his adult state, under the education of 
his mother, without having experienced any trouble. Your 
mother, under peculiar difficulties, and greater than others 
have had to contend with, on account of my exile, has 
laboured hard to prepare you for the age of manhood ; doing 
the duties of both parents. So that I would have you pay 
the whole debt of gratitude which is usually due to both 
parents, to your mother, as having performed the whole work. 
The duties which you owe to your father will be performed, 
if you make your mother the engrossing object of your tender- 
ness. I ask nothing more for myself than that you should be 
full of piety towards your mother. Or rather, I should say, 
such conduct towards her will be acknowledged by me as so 
much kindness actually done to myself. Thus it becomes 
you to lay the foundation of filial duty to your father, in 
acts of gratitude and affection to your mother. Farewell. 

THE SAME TO THE SAME. 

When I happened to be at Himera, upon some necessary 
business, I heard the daughters of Stesichorus sing some 
poems to the lyre, partly composed by their father, and partly 
by themselves. Those«of their own were certainly inferior to 
their father's ; but when compared with the poems of others, 
they were greatly superior. Insomuch, that I should esteem 
him to have been thrice happy who had so instructed his 
daughters; and those thrice happy, whose attainments had 
been carried to an extent beyond what was natural to their 
sex, by such instruction. But to come to the point, Paurola, 
I am very anxious to be informed with what design you are 
so given up to the exercise of the body in arms, and hunting, 
and such like pursuits; while you suffer the mind to be 
unexercised in study and Grecian literature ; to cultivate 
which ought to be your chief and almost your sole object. 



64 LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 

Regard must be had to the exercises of the body, for the sake 
of health, rather than strength, unless, indeed, a person is 
desirous of qualifying himself for contending in the sacred 
games ; but to provide by every means for the improvement of 
the mind, should be the great concern of him who is desirous 
of living with the greatest credit in a popular state. Unless, 
perhaps, you have resolved (which some say is the case) to 
seek and affect the imperial station, as that to which you are 
authorized by the laws to aspire ; and on that account you 
are cultivating bodily strength, to fit you for the acquisition 
and maintenance of this sort of supremacy. But take counsel 
in this matter from one who repents of his condition as a 
monarch ; who not spontaneously, but of necessity, has entered 
upon that career. He who has had experience of the life of 
a private man, and also of that of a monarch, would rather 
wish to be ruled over, than to rule. A private man has only 
one tyrant to fear. He is free from other disturbances. But 
the potentate is at once in dread of those who are without, 
and those by whom he is guarded. Among other fears and 
miseries, he is under continual apprehension from the treachery 
of his protectors. Therefore, embracing your parent's prudent 
counsel, do not affect an elevation above the common lot. 
Leave, therefore, monarchical power, exposed as it is to con- 
stant fears and unceasing dangers, to your enemies and their 
children. But if your youth and inexperience persuade you 
to imagine that there is something pleasant and delectable in 
the condition of a monarch, instead o*f the greatest infelicity, 
you are altogether in an error, arising from your ignorance of 
what that condition really is. Pray God that he will never 
give you experimental knowledge of what the life is which a 
monarch leads. 



The letter which Phalaris is made to write to Pythagoras, 
has a good deal of character in it, and is in no bad keeping 
with the general tone of the compositions of the same kind 
which are in this publication ascribed to the tyrant of Agri- 
gentum. The epistle runs thus : 



LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALAUIS. G5 



TO PYTHAGORAS. 

The despotic rule of Phalaris is at the farthest distance, in the 
estimation of men, from the philosophy of Pythagoras. Yet, 
though this be the general opinion, there is no reason why we 
should not try its validity by the experience which an inter- 
course with each other will afford. Familiar converse will 
sometimes unite in friendship characters which may seem at 
first to have nothing in common. Indeed, report has brought 
to my ears such an account of you, that I am convinced I 
shall find in you one of the worthiest of men. But do not 
form a hasty judgment of me, nor listen to unsupported opi- 
nions concerning me. It is owing to these prejudices excited 
against my government as despotic and tyrannical, that it is 
unsafe for me to come to you ; for if I should venture upon 
the journey without a military guard, I should be at the mercy 
of every one who might choose to attack or insult me ; and if 
I proceed with a force sufficient for my protection, I shall be 
suspected of hostile intentions. But to you it is permitted 
to travel in safety, and without any apprehension of injury : 
there is, therefore, nothing to prevent your coming to me, and 
passing your time with me in perfect ease and security. 
When you are persuaded to make a trial of me, you will find 
to your surprise the private friend where you are looking for 
the despot; and if you are expecting the private friend, you will 
find a character with something in it savouring of despotism, 
— and that of necessity, for it is not possible to administer 
such a government as that with which I am invested, without 
a degree of severity that may amount in the opinion of some 
to cruelty : a despot to be safe, must take care not to err on 
the side of humanity. For many other reasons, but especially 
that you may know me as I really am, I feel very desirous of 
being brought into familiar intercourse with you. I shall 
readily be made a convert to the truth, if by the instructions 
of Pythagoras it shall be shewn to me that, consistently with 

F 



66 LETTERS ATTRIBUTED TO PHALARIS. 

my personal safety, I can adopt a gentler and milder method 
of governing than that which I have hitherto pursued. 



In a letter supposed to have been afterwards written by the 
same tyrant to one of his friends, it would appear that he was 
successful in obtaining a visit from Pythagoras, and that the 
visit did him no prejudice in the esteem of the philosopher. 



PHALARIS TO ORSILOCHUS. 



If the reputed unwillingness of Pythagoras, the philosopher, 
to visit me, has given occasion to some calumny concerning 
me, as you have said, coupling that statement with an opinion 
of your own, that he deserved praise for his prudence in avoid- 
ing my society ; surely I deserve praise when it appears 
that he has now been my voluntary and pleased companion 
these five months. Unless he had found in me something 
suitable and agreeable to his own character and habits of 
thinking, he would not have remained with me an hour. 



67 



CHAPTER VIL 

PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 

If we accept as genuine the following epistle from Pythag^ 
oras to the first Hiero, the communication from Phalaris to 
Orsilochus, as exhibited in the preceding chapter, will be less 
worthy of belief. 

PYTHAGORAS TO HIERO. 

The life I lead at present is easy, tranquil, and secure. But 
yours is by no means suitable to me. A moderate and self- 
denying man has no need of a Sicilian table. Pythagoras 
finds everywhere enough to satisfy the wants of the day. The 
servitude of a palace is heavy and intolerable to one not 
accustomed to it. A sufficiency in one's self is at once safe 
and honourable ; no one envies or plots against it. By living 
in this tranquil and secure state, we draw nearest to God. 
Good habits are not the offspring of luxury and sensual indul- 
gence, but rather of that state of indigence which favours the 
growth of virtue. Variety and excess in pleasure enslave the 
souls of weak mortals, especially the pleasure in which you 
find your principal gratification. By thus giving yourself up 
to the guidance of your passions, you become captivated by 
them, and have no power to rescue or help yourself. While 
thus you live, your conversation must be the reverse of that 
which is profitable. Do not, therefore, ask Pythagoras to 
live with you. Physicians have no desire to be sharers in the 
diseases of their patients. 1 



Another letter ascribed to Pythagoras, but of the same 

1 See " Court of the Gentiles," by Theoph. Gale, 135; and " Opuscula 
Mythological by Thomas Gale, Amstelaedami, apud Hen. Wetstenium, 
1688. 



68 PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 

doubtful origin, has been preserved by Stobseus, and is given 
us among the Fragmenta Pythagoreorum at the end of the 
Opuscula of Thomas Gale ; 2 which, togetherwith some of the 
epistles imputed to certain scholars of the same renowned 
philosopher, it may not be amiss in this place to present in 
an English dress. The letter of Pythagoras, who was the 
founder of the Italic school, is to Anaximenes, a follower of 
Thales, and a professor of the Ionic philosophy, of which 
Thales laid the foundation. 

PYTHAGORAS TO ANAXIMENES. 

You, my excellent friend, if you were content to be no better 
than Pythagoras in generosity and glory, would leave Mile- 
tus and travel to other countries. But the glory of your own 
country detains you at home, and so it would me, were I of 
like capacity with Anaximenes to promote its prosperity. If 
the cities of Greece are bereaved of those who are so capable 
of assisting them, they not only lose that which is their grace 
and ornament, but the peril they are exposed to from the 
hostility of the Persians is greatly increased. It is not, there- 
fore, right in your situation to be always star-gazing, but more 
honourable to watch over one's country. Even I am not 
always occupied in study, but have my thoughts sometimes 
engaged in the quarrels and contentions of the Italian states. 



Lysis was a scholar of Pythagoras, and is generally men- 
tioned as the preceptor of Epaminondas; but Dr. Bentley 
thinks that the contemporary of Epaminondas could not have 
been also an auditor of Pythagoras, and is strongly of opinion 
that there were two persons of that name, both scholars of 
the Pythagorean school, the one a contemporary of Pythag- 
oras, the other of Epaminondas, to whom history relates him 

2 He was greatly distinguished by his knowledge of the Greek language, of 
which he was the Regius Professor at Cambridge. In 1672, he was chosen 
Head Master of St. Paul's School, and was employed to write the inscriptions 
on the Monument erected in memory of the conflagration in 1666. 



PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 69 

to have fled after the catastrophe next mentioned. It is a well- 
recorded fact, that Lysis and Archippus, two of the scholars 
of the great philosopher, were the only persons who escaped 
from the lire in which the scholars assembled at the house of 
Milo, in the town of Crotona, were destroyed, in consequence 
of the excitement produced by their political interference: 3 
and the interval between that event and the age of Epami- 
nondas will not allow us, without assigning to Lysis, the auditor 
of Pythagoras, an improbable length of life, to suppose him 
to have been also the friend of Epaminondas. The letter of 
Lysis to Hipparchus, one of the same school, is as follows : 

LYSIS TO HIPPARCHUS. 

After Pythagoras disappeared from among men, I never 
expected to witness the dispersion of those who had been 
united under his instruction and discipline. But when, con- 
trary to expectation, they were scattered in various directions, 
as persons coming forth from a great merchant-ship on the 
completion of her voyage, I considered it a sacred duty to store 
up in my memory his divine precepts ; and by no means to 
impart the benefits of his wisdom to those whose souls were 
uncleansed from their defilements, even in their sleep. For I 
deemed it as unlawful to proffer to any persons first present- 
ing themselves, things acquired with so much labour and 
study, as to divulge to the profane the mysteries of the two 

3 The incendiary who set fire to the house where the Pythagorean college 
was assembled, was Cylon, a man of opulence and influence in that city. 
Lysis and Archippus, being the youngest and strongest of the number, 
escaped; of which transaction the epoch generally assigned is Olymp. 
lxxii. 3. The death of Epaminondas at the battle of Mantinea, happened 
Olymp. civ. 2. Lysis is said by Diogenes Laertius to have been the author of 
the golden verses, and there are other authorities to the same effect. Hierocles, 
a heathen philosopher, who lived in the fifth century, and taught in Alexandria, 
wrote a commentary on the sirr) x9 v(J <*-i or golden verses, of which commen- 
tary Photius has preserved fragments, and ascribed them to Lysis. Jamblicus, 
in recording this memorable slaughter of the first Pythagoreans, adds, that 
when the innocence of the Pythagoreans appeared to others of the city, thej 
stoned those who had destroyed them. 



70 PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 

Eleusinian goddesses. Those who do the one or the other of 
these things seem to me to be equally impious. It is but 
reasonable to consider how much time we have consumed in 
washing out the spots which had become, as it were, ingrained 
in our minds, until, after the lapse of five years, we were made 
capable of hearing and receiving the discourses and doctrines 
of that great man. As dyers prepare the cloth by a cleansing 
and constringing process to receive into its substance an in- 
delible colour, which nothing can afterwards remove ; so that 
divine man prepared the lovers of wisdom to prevent his 
being disappointed in his expectations respecting those who 
were advancing under his discipline. For he did not deal in 
that spurious instruction and those snares in which the 
sophists entangle their inexperienced scholars, amusing them 
with unprofitable exercises ; but he laid the true foundation in 
their minds of human and divine knowledge: while these 
sophists, pretending to teach after the manner of Pythagoras, 
and in appearance doing many showy and surprising things, 
only deceive and ensnare their youthful hearers, and render 
those who listen to them conceited and presumptuous. Their 
speculations and discourses are of a liberal and specious 
appearance, but are coupled with a practice of the most 
disorderly and gross description. It is as if one poured into 
the muddy bottom of a deep well pure and pellucid water, 
whereby the foul contents would be set in motion, and the 
water corrupted; just so it is with those who teach and are 
taught after this manner. A thick and impervious hedge 
seems to grow up round the hearts and minds of those who 
are not in the pure and regular course initiated, shutting out 
the ingenuous forms of mildness, modesty, and intelligence. 
All manner of evil principles grow rank under this thick wood, 
entirely intercepting the view of right reason. Among the 
parents of these evils, I would name first intemperance and 
avarice. They have, indeed, each of them a numerous 
offspring. Intemperance engenders impiety, excesses, and 
corruptions, leading to enormities and outrages against nature, 
and terminating in headlong ruin and destruction. Already 



PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 71 

have we seen men, urged on by their lawless passions, break 
through all the barriers of nature ; stopping at no limits, and 
regardless of the rights and sanctities of kindred ; reverencing 
neither the authority of parent, or law, or prince, or state; 
but striving to get the mastery over them, in order to accom- 
plish their subversion and ruin. Such are the fruits of intem- 
perance. — From avarice, proceed rapine, parricide, sacrilege, 
poisonings, and such like enormities. The first step towards 
reformation must be to clear the forests where these savage 
passions are bred and nourished, by the most effective 
methods; and, having thus vindicated the rights of reason 
and humanity against these wicked propensities, our next 
aim should be to infuse something of a wholesome character 
in their stead into the soul. What you have learned, noble 
Hipparchus, with great pains and study, you have not main- 
tained ; having tasted Sicilian luxuries, which you ought not 
to have allowed yourself to taste a second time. It is cur- 
rently reported that you have carried your philosophy abroad, 
a thing forbidden by Pythagoras, who, having committed his 
commentaries to the keeping of Darao, his daughter, enjoined 
her not to let them go forth out of his own family. She might 
have sold them for a large sum, but would not part with them. 
Poverty and obedience to her parent, were considered by her 
much more honourable than gold ; and it is said, that at her 
death she left the same with a similar prohibition to her own 
daughter Bistalia. We men are less faithful to him, and 
transgress his rules, to which we have solemnly professed our 
adherence. If you are changed in this respect, I shall rejoice; 
but if otherwise, you are to me as one out of life. 



Theano is the name by some given to the wife of Pythagoras, 
and by others to his daughter. It may be that he had both 
a wife and daughter of that name. In the heading of the 
letter which follows, Theano is introduced as the person who 
was called the daughter of Pythagorean wisdom, i) Trjg 
YlvOayopetov aoQiag Ovyarr^p. Her letter is to a friend named 
Eubula, on the education of her children. 



72 PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 



THEANO TO EUBULA, ON THE EDUCATION OF HER 
CHILDREN. 

I hear you bring up your children in a delicate manner. 
But let me remind you, that it is the duty of a mother not 
to educate her offspring in habits of pleasure and indulgence, 
but to give them the discipline which will lead them to that 
which is good and wise. See that you do not act the part of one 
that rather flatters than loves them. When pleasure becomes 
part of the education of children, it is sure to render them 
ungovernable. Nothing is more pleasing to children than 
habitual indulgence ; wherefore, my dear friend, have a special 
care not to convert your nursery into a place rather of seduction 
than education. Nature is seduced and perverted when the 
will and senses become devoted to pleasure ; the mind is 
thereby rendered incapable of effort, and the body is enfeebled. 

Children should be seasoned by rough and laborious exer- 
cises for the sorrows and conflicts of life, that they may not 
be the slaves of accidents and impressions, charmed with 
whatever flatters the sense, and frightened by every call to 
exertion; but, on the contrary, may learn to honour virtue 
above all things, abstaining from pleasure, and resting on 
what is good and profitable. Neither ought they to be suf- 
fered to eat to satiety, to be expensively amused, to be licen- 
tious in their sports, to say what they please, or to choose 
their own pursuits. 

I am informed that if they cry you are full of fears, and are 
ambitious to change their tears into laughter, and even if 
they strike their nurse, or use violent language towards your- 
self, that you only smile ; — that your study is how to keep 
them cool in the summer heat, and warm in the winter's frost ; 
and to surround them with all those indulgences which poor 
children know nothing of, and without which they are as 
well nourished, grow as well, and enjoy a firmer constitution 
and better health. You seem to bring up your children as if 
they were the progeny of Sardanapalus, dissolving by effemi- 



PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 73 

nate breeding the proper nature of the other sex. What can 
be done with a child who if he has not his food brought him 
immediately sets up a cry ; and when the time for his meal 
arrives is only content with what solicits the palate; is 
overcome with a little heat, trembles with a little cold, spurns 
at reproof, is impatient of denial, must have dainties, or is 
mightily offended ; delights in wickedness, and carries his 
effeminate selfishness into everything he says and does ? But, 
my dear friend, knowing, as you well do, that children brought 
up in these habits of softness and self-indulgence, when they 
come to man's estate, are in a condition of miserable slavery ; 
withhold from them, I entreat you, these allurements, and, 
conducting their education on strict and austere, instead of 
these enervating principles, accustom them to endure hunger 
and thirst, cold and heat, and to comport themselves with 
modest shame before their equals and their seniors. Thus 
taught and bred up, they will become noble and ingenuous in 
their minds and manners, in the seasons both of study and 
relaxation. It is labour, my dear friend, which prepares the 
minds of boys for the highest attainments ; by which process, 
when properly prepared, they will the more readily take the 
dye and tincture of virtuous principles. Wherefore I pray 
you to be very careful lest as vines badly trained are des- 
titute of fruit, so your children, in consequence of their bad 
education, may yield only the useless products of a perverse 
cultivation. 



THEANO TO NICOSTRATA, CONSOLING HER UNDER THE ILL- 
USAGE OF HER HUSBAND, AND RECOMMENDING THE 
PROPER CONDUCT TO BE OBSERVED TOWARDS HIM. 

The report has reached me of the insane behaviour of your 
misguided husband, that he has formed a disgraceful intimacy, 
and that you are inflamed with jealousy, My dear friend, 
many similar cases have come to my knowledge. Men are, 
as it seems, taken captive by women of this character, — are 
kept in chains by them, and robbed of all sense and prudence. 



74 PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 

You, it seems, give yourself up to sorrow ; have no rest day 
or night ; your despondency almost deprives you of your 
reason; and you are only occupied in schemes of vengeance. 
But do not thus, my dear friend. The province of a wife is 
not to watch over her husband, but to be obedient to him ; 
and this duty of obedience calls upon her to bear his follies 
with patience. His present connexion has no tie but plea- 
sure, but his engagement to his wife is grounded on the value 
of her services ; and her prudence consists in her care not to 
mix fresh evil with what is already evil enough, nor to heap 
folly upon folly. For there are certain delinquencies which 
are aggravated by reproaches, but which, if rebuked only by 
silence, cease of themselves. Thus a fire goes out by being 
undisturbed. If your husband is desirous of doing what is 
wrong without your knowledge, and you withdraw the veil 
with which he covers his trespass, he will soon openly trans- 
gress. Do not let it appear that all you value in your husband 
is his attachment, but rather expect your happiness from his 
integrity, for this forms the grace of the conjugal union. 

Of this be sure that to the person who has seduced his af- 
fections, he betakes himself only when impelled by his evil 
passions ; but that it is for the comfort of companionship that 
he returns to your society. While his grosser nature leads him 
to her, his correcter feelings and better reason give you the 
preference in his mind : the season of illicit pleasure is brief 
and transient; satiety soon succeeds. No one but the despe- 
rately profligate can be long content with such company. What 
can be more vain than a cupidity that delights in doing wrong 
to itself ? It will be stopped, therefore, at some time or other, 
by being forced upon perceiving that it is throwing away 
character, while it is lessening the true enjoyment of life. No 
man in his senses w 7 ill persist in a voluntary infliction on him- 
self; but, recalled at last by a perception of what is due to 
himself, and seeing how much his bad practices are reducing 
the stock of his real gratifications, he will begin to recognise 
your value ; and, unable to bear any longer the infamy of his 
own conduct, he will suddenly change his views and sentiments. 



PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 75 

But let me entreat you, my dear friend, do not seek to re- 
taliate by adopting the manners of those who have drawn away 
your husband ; but rather seek to distinguish yourself in his 
eyes by the chaste propriety of your demeanour towards him, 
by your superintending care of his family, by your correct 
intercourse with his acquaintance, and by your tenderness 
towards his children. Do not even suffer yourself to be trans- 
ported with jealousy towards her who has done you this in- 
jury. Such persons are not worth your attention, but let the 
whole bent of your mind be directed towards the virtuous ; 
and cherish always a disposition to peace and reconciliation, 
for these beautiful and gentle qualities compel the respect 
even of our enemies. Honour and esteem can only be the re- 
ward of uprightness. By this, a wife may acquire a power over 
her husband, and be held in honour, rather than in servitude 
by him. By this mode of reproving him, he will be the sooner 
put to shame, and will sooner seek to be reconciled. He will 
love you with the greater ardour by being rendered sensible 
of his injustice towards you, and by being taught to appreci- 
ate the integrity of your conduct, while at the same time he 
is made to apprehend the risk to which he has exposed him- 
self of losing your affections. 

The reconciliation of friends, when their differences are com- 
posed, resembles the delight produced by the cessation of cor- 
poral suffering. Endeavour to sympathise with him in all 
that befalls him. When he suffers from sickness, yours must 
be the suffering of mental disease ; if he sinks in his reputation, 
you must be content to fall with him ; if he does any thing to 
mar his fortune, it will become you to endure voluntarily the 
same privations : and thus you will show him that your union 
with him is complete ; so that to inflict pain upon him as the 
correction of his ill conduct, would be to inflict it upon your- 
self. 

If you could resolve to separate yourself from your present 
husband, and make trial of another, that other might offend 
in the same way, and so might another still. Solitude would 
not suit a young temperament like yours. Are you prepared 



76 PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 

to abjure the yoke altogether, and live a life of celibacy? 
Or will you adopt the desperate resolution of neglecting the 
management of your house, and thus ruin your husband ? 
You will then be involved in the same condition of want and 
misery. 

But will you take vengeance upon the unworthy seducer of 
your husband's affections ? Depend upon it she will be on her 
guard, and will well observe your motions. And if you pro- 
ceed to acts of open hostility, you will find that a female lost 
to shame is a desperate antagonist. Again, do you think it 
seemly to have daily contests with your husband ? And what 
would be the advantage of this ? Conflict and mutual re- 
proaches will never bring back order and self-restraint, but 
will only widen the breach, and multiply the causes of irri- 
tation. What next? Will you consult how you may do him 
some harm ? Far be this from you, dear friend. We are taught 
by the tragedy in which the crime of Medea is set forth in a 
sad story of woful incidents, to repress the risings of jealousy. 
As in a disease of the eyes we must keep our hands from 
touching them, so must you take care not to aggravate your 
wrongs by remonstrance and vindication. It is in patient 
endurance that you will find your most effectual relief. 



THEANO TO CALLISTONA. ON THE GOVERNMENT 
OF SERVANTS. 

To you, the juniors of our sex, is conceded the legitimate 
province of the government of a family, as soon as you enter 
into the state of matrimony. But instruction in this duty 
ought to proceed from those who from their age are more fit 
to furnish the rules of household economy : for it is highly 
becoming to commence our inquiry into those things with 
which we are unacquainted, as learners, and to place the 
highest value on the counsel of persons of age and experience. 
And really these things are very fit to engage the thoughts of 
a young lady, and to be made a part of her early education. 
To married ladies is committed the primary cares of the house, 



PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDEISXE. 77 

and especially the regulation of the female servants: 4 and 
nothing more conduces to the good state of this department 
than benevolence. This object is not attained by the mere 
purchase of the persons of our servants, but is a posterior ac- 
quisition, resulting from the treatment of them by prudent 
mistresses. It is an advantage proceeding from the just use of 
the service of our domestics ; not fatiguing them by the im- 
position of too much labour, nor suffering them to be weak, 
for want of due support. There are some who think it is their 
most gainful course, by oppressing their servants with toil, 
and affording them a scanty subsistence, to get what they can 
out of them, by hard treatment. Thus while they make by 
this miserable proceeding a few farthings profit, they are met 
by a malicious counteraction, much odium, and the most in- 
jurious conspiracies. But I would recommend to you to re- 
ward the daily labours of your servants, by measuring out 
their provisions in a just proportion to the products of their 
industry. But in cases of refractory behaviour, consult your 
own sense of duty, not their advantages. Servants should be 
respected and punished according to their deserts. But cruelty 
is followed by no satisfaction to the person who inflicts it, and 
reason is as much opposed as humanity to malice and oppres- 
sion. But if servants are actuated by such an extraordinary 
measure of vice and profligacy as to be beyond correction, 
they must be got rid of, That which ceases to be of use, had 
better not be retained ; but in such a proceeding act delibe- 
rately and with consultation, acquainting yourself well with the 
truth of the facts before you condemn, and the real amount of 
the delinquencies, that you may limit and proportion the pun- 
ishment. It comports with the authority of a mistress to give 
sentence ; it is a becoming act of grace and favour to remit the 
punishment of the offence. By a due regulation of yourself in 
these matters, you will maintain decorum and propriety in the 
manners of your household. Some mistresses, to gratify a cruel 

4 It must be remembered that these servants were slaves, either purchased 
or born in the house. 



78 PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 

temper, inflict corporal chastisement on their servants, giving 
way to their anger and resentment, and being over severe in 
noting every transgression. Thus some servants are worn 
down by too lengthened employment ; others seek their safety 
by absconding ; some, to escape from their sufferings, have re- 
moved themselves by their own hands. And thus these mis- 
tresses having created a desert around them, have had abun- 
dant cause to repent of their violence and temerity. But, my 
dear friend, think of those instruments which, if their strings 
be too loose, send forth but a feeble sound, and if too much 
stretched, are broken. In the same manner it is with the go- 
vernment of servants; too much relaxation produces the disso- 
nance of disobedience, but where severity is urged too far, 
nature herself gives way. In all things, moderation is the best 
and safest course. 



MELISSA TO CLEARETA. ON FEMALE DRESS AND ATTIRE. 

You appear, my friend, to be endowed by nature with many 
shining qualities ; and I cannot but infer from the ardent de- 
sire you manifest to hear something on the proprieties of female 
dress and decoration, that you are anxious to increase in virtue 
as you grow in years. To begin then. It behoves a wise and 
well-educated woman to present herself to her lawful husband 
not richly but modestly adorned ; in a dress more distinguished 
by its delicate whiteness and purity, than by its costliness 
and profusion. Those thin, transparent textures of purple, 
variegated with golden ornaments, ought to be rejected, as 
suitable only to those vicious characters who use them for the 
purpose of seduction. But that which most adorns a woman 
who seeks only to please and attract her husband, is her 
carriage and demeanour, and not her habiliments. It is the 
grace and honour of the married lady to please well her own 
husband, not to captivate the vulgar gaze. Let the blush 
upon your cheek, the sign of virtuous shame, serve in the place 
of paint; and modesty, propriety, and prudence, be substituted 
for gold and emerald. She that has a proper estimate of femi- 



PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 79 

nine modesty will find the beauty which she most delights 
in, not in the splendour of attire and ornament, but in the ge- 
neral regulations of her home, and in the happiness she im- 
parts to her husband, by the faithful accomplishment of his 
wishes ; for the will of the husband is the unwritten law by 
which the wife should govern herself, and to which her life 
should be conformed. She may take credit to herself for 
having brought with her the fairest and largest dowry in her 
habit and principle of obedience. It is to the beauty and 
wealth of the soul that we are to trust, rather than to the 
outward advantages of person or fortune : those are often the 
victims of disease or envy, but the wealth of the soul abides 
with us till death, firm and unmoveable. 



If the letters last above produced are received as the genuine 
products of the pens of the immediate scholars of Pythagoras, 
they must be admitted to bear very creditable testimony to 
the discipline of that ancient school; and as very curious and 
interesting specimens of the rules of society recognized amongst 
the most morally educated in the primitive times of heathen 
antiquity. But let us not be too charitable in giving all this 
credit to Pythagoras and his school. That Pythagoras bor- 
rowed the purest part of his moral philosophy from the Jewish 
church and Scriptures, is generally admitted by the best in- 
formed, or rather, it may be said, is proved by abundant testi- 
monies ; as will be seen by turning to the various passages to 
that effect produced by Theophilus Gale, in his Court of the 
Gentiles. 5 Amongst other authorities there relied on, that of 
Strabo is particularly strong, who relates of Pythagoras that 
he went into Judea, and for some time dwelt in Mount Carmel, 
where the priests shewed Pythagoras's walks, even in his 
time. Josephus also bears a like testimony, who, speaking 
of Pythagoras, gives it as his opinion that he was well ac- 
quainted with Jewish learning, and eagerly adopted many 

5 Part II, cap. v. sect. 2. 



80 PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 

things belonging to it. That he was in Judea, and dwelt in 
Mount Carmel, is stated by Jamblicus, and also that he tra- 
velled twenty-two years in Egypt; and Archbishop Usher, 
in his Annals says, " It may be proved that Pythagoras 
conversed with the Jews at Babylon, forasmuch as he 
transferred many of their doctrines into his philosophy, as 
Hermippus declares in his First Book of Things concerning 
Pythagoras, cited by Josephus, and in his First Book of 
Lawgivers, cited by Cuzen ; which is likewise confirmed by 
Aristobulus the Jew, a Peripatetic, in his first book to Philo- 
meter, who, moreover, was induced by the same reason to 
believe that the books of Moses were translated into the 
Greek tongue before the Persian empire ; whereas it is much 
more probable that Pythagoras received that part of his learn- 
ing from the conversation he had with the Hebrews." 

The letter above produced as written by Lysis, one of the 
most celebrated scholars and auditors of Pythagoras, brings to 
view a leading characteristic of his discipline, — sequestration 
from the common intercourse of the world. It was the great 
rule of that sect to hold no communion or fellowship with any 
persons not initiated into the same, and regularly trained by 
the exercises and trials prescribed by its great founder, for 
arriving at that moral perfection and completeness in them- 
selves, avrapxzLa, which he proposed to their attainment. And 
in this particular the College of Pythagoras seems to have 
copied the pattern of the sect of the Essenes among the Jews, 
separating themselves from the rest of mankind, whom they 
regarded as profane, and not to be admitted into their society. 
The Pythagorean order and method of institution, and par- 
ticularly the mode of receiving and preparing the candidates 
for reception into the Pythagorean college, is succinctly set 
forth in the eighth chapter of the first book of Aulus Gellius; 
wherein the attention paid to the carriage and physiognomy 
of the novice at his first introduction is singular and striking. 
"Jam a principio adolescentes qui sese addiscendum obtulerant 
fpvcrioyvojfievei." 
The Pythagorean name and profession existed through 



PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 81 

many ages, from the time of the great founder. In the time 
of the Emperor Adrian and the Antonines many adhered, 
ostensibly at least, to the rules and discipline of his severe 
institution. The sophists, especially, affected a great venera- 
tion for the mysteries and lofty claims of the Italic school ; 
and it is not improbable that the letters handed down to us 
as having been written by the early scholars of Pythagoras, if 
not really the productions of those under whose names they 
have come to us, were composed by some sophist or sophists 
under the reigns of the philosophic emperors, when the maxims 
and doctrines of the Greek sage were in high reputation at 
court. By Marcus Aurelius, surnamed Antoninus, the Pytha- 
gorean avrapKua was a dogma sure to be regarded with favour. 

If these letters are to be considered as the productions of 
so late a period, we are not to wonder that the spirit of their 
contents has so lively and useful a bearing upon the duties 
and details of domestic life ; since, after the communication 
of the light of the gospel, heathen philosophy involuntarily 
partook of its character ; and sometimes, hardly conscious of 
the source of its amelioration, rose greatly above its own 
principles, and advanced new claims to respect, in ignorance 
of the grounds on which those claims properly rested. That 
the Stoics copied many Christian precepts into their own 
system of morality, no one can doubt, who gives due attention 
to the writings of Seneca or Marcus Antoninus. 

That the Pythagorean schools were replenished from the 
same sacred fountains, is clearly seen in what issued from the 
pens of those sophists who taught at a later period in Alexan- 
dria and Rome, as adepts in the Italic philosophy ; and who, 
if they were not strictly Pythagoreans, may at least be said to 
have Pythagorized with all the pretensions of that proud sect. 
This will more plainly appear, if a comparison be made 
between the early professors of the Pythagorean discipline 
and those who, closing the long retinue of the great founder, 
flourished in the dawn of the Christian day. Numerous 
fragments of the Pythagoreans are preserved in the cok 
lections of Stobseus and others ; and those which are given 

G 



82 PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 

us at the end of Gale's Opuscula are interesting and valuable; 
but it may be doubted whether any of the philosophers whose 
moral sentences are there produced, except Secundus, who 
certainly lived under the reign of Adrian, were existing after 
the commencement of our Lord's ministry. Sextus, or Sextius, 
called the Pythagorean, has been thought by some to have 
been the person named by Marcus Aurelius, surnamed Anto- 
ninus, among those to whom he was indebted for their advice 
and instruction in his youth. If the same was the Sextus 
whose Enchiridion of instructive maxims appears in the dress 
given it in the Latin translation of Ruffinus, he was certainly 
one of those heathen philosophers whose writings owed much 
to Gospel morality; though it must be confessed that the 
passages principally so characterised have been suspected to 
be the interpolations of the translator. 

The probability is, that the preceptor and friend of Marcus 
was not the author of the sentences alluded to, but another 
Sextus, who lived in the time of Julius Caesar and the begin- 
ning of the reign of Augustus, and of whom Seneca, in Epist. 
lxiv. makes such honourable mention. If the Sextus of 
Marcus Antoninus was really the author of the Enchiridion 
in question, and of the particular sentences to which allusion 
has been made, the Christian, with the book of God in his 
hand, must read them with great interest, as one among the 
most striking instances of the furtive intermixture of its holy 
precepts with the dogmas and aphorisms of heathen wisdom. 4 



4 Thus, for example, we find among the sentences of Sextus, the Pythago- 
rean, the following, which, if Sextus gave them to his scholars, Sextus, it 
would seem, must himself have gone for them to school to Him who taught as 
never man taught. Dignus esto eo, qui te dignatus est filium dicere, et age 
omnia ut Alius Dei. 1 Cor. vi. 17, 18; Rom. viii. 14, 16, 17, 21. Corpus 
quidem tuum incedat in terra, anima autem semper sit apud Deum. Col. 
iii. 2, 3 ; Phil. iii. 20. Ver castus et sine peccato potestatem accepit a Deo 
esse films Dei. John i. 12. Nequaquam latebis Deum, agens injuste sed 
nee cogitans quidem. Heb. iv. 12, 13. Quot vitia habet anima, tot etdo- 
minos. John viii. 34; Rom. vi. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Quod Deus tibi dat 
nullus auferre potest. John xvi. 22. Non cibi qui per os inferuntur polluunt 
hominem, sed ea quae ex malis actibus proferuntur. Matt. xv. 17, et seq. In 



PYTHAGOREAN CORRESPONDENCE. 83 

omni quod bene agis autorem esse deputa Deum. 2 Cor. iii. 5 ; Phil. iv. 13 ; 
John xv. 5. Mali nullius autor est Deus. Quod pati non vis ab alio, 
neque id facias. Matt. vii. 12. Cum praxes hominibus memento quod et tibi 
prseest Deus. Eph. vi. 9 ; Col. iv. 1. Nefas est Deum patrem invocare, et 
aliquid inhonestum agere. Luke vi. 46; John xiv. 11, 12. Liber eris ab 
omnibus cum Deo servieris. 1 Cor. vii. 22 ; Rom. vi. 22. Solent homines 
abscindere aliqua membrorum suorum pro sanitate reliquorum; quanto id 
prsestantius pro pudicitia fiet ? Matt. v. 29. Sermo verus de Deo, sermo 
Dei est. Matt. xi. 27. Omnem magis causam refer ad Deum. Phil. iv. 6 ; 
1 Pet. v. 7. Qusecunque dat mundus, nemo firmiter tenet. John xiv. 27 ; 
Matt. vi. 19. Divina sapientia vera est scientia. 2 Cor. ii. 6, et seq. ; James 
iii. 17; 1 Thess. iii. 13. Cor diligentis Deum in manu Dei stabilitum est, 
1 John iv. 18. Si non diligis Deum non ibis ad Deum. 1 Cor. xvi. 22. 



84 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SPURIOUS GREEK EPISTLES. 

The letters which have been ascribed to Themistocles were 
first printed at Rome, in the year 1626, from a MS. in the 
Vatican. They were suspected to be a forgery by some, but 
by many they appear to have been taken upon trust as 
genuine productions. They all bear date posterior to his 
banishment, and none have been produced as having been 
written before that time. Thus thougrh all such as mav be 
supposed to have been written when they might reasonably 
be expected to have been preserved, have been lost; yet a 
regular series has been handed down as coming from the 
distant places 1 to which the general had repaired during his 
exile. These letters are in number twenty-one ; and among 
them is a letter to Pausanias, before the discovery of that 
Spartan's traitorous correspondence with the Persian power. 
There are also other letters from Themistocles to the same 
person after the detection of the conspiracy ; whereas, it 
appears from Diodorus, that Pausanias was put to death six 
years before the exile of the Athenian. 

The epistles of Socrates 2 and his scholars, Xenophon, Aris- 
tippus, and others, were collected and published by the cele- 
brated Leo Allatius, having been found in a MS. in the Vatican. 
They were printed in the year 1637. They have decided marks 
of their spurious origin, notwithstanding all the efforts of the 
editor, in his elaborate introduction, to establish their legi- 

1 Argos, Corcyra, Epirus, Ephesus, Magnesia. 

2 Ruhnkenius, in his " Annotations to the Memorabilia," considers these 
Socratical epistles as decidedly fictitious, (ad lib. i. 11, 48, 60.) And it is 
not a little strange to find so acute a critic as Valckenaer quoting from them 
as if they were genuine. See his note concerning the title of the work above 
alluded to. 



SPURIOUS GREEK EPISTLES. 85 

timacy. The correspondence of Socrates with the king of 
Macedon has the air of puerile romance. In another letter 
which the great philosopher is supposed to write to one of 
those who had fled with Thrasybulus from the violence of the 
thirty tyrants, he is made to give an account of the state of 
Athens since their departure. He relates the death of Leon, 
and the transactions in which he was engaged ; which Leon, 
and after him Theramenes, were both sacrificed before the 
flight of Thrasybulus, with his companions, to Thebes. In a 
letter from one of the scholars of Socrates, it is stated, that 
the Athenians put to death both Anytus and Miletus, the 
prosecutors of Socrates ; whereas the two facts are well authen- 
ticated that Miletus was killed, but that Anytus was banished. 
In one of these letters Xenophon invites some friends to 
come to see him at his plantation near Olympia, informing 
them that Aristippus and Phaedo had been visiting him there, 
to whom he had been reciting his memoirs of Socrates, which 
both had approved of; whereas this Aristippus was always 
on the worst terms with Xenophon, and could hardly have 
given his approbation to a book which, as Dr. Bentley 
observes, was a satire against himself. The letters abound in 
errors and anachronisms, which the great critic has well 
exposed. And the subjects of the correspondence, as well as 
its tone and character, very decisively betray the imposture. 

Aristippus, in a letter to his daughter, tells her that, in case 
of his death, it was his wish that she should go to Athens and 
live with Myrto and Xantippe, the two wives of Socrates. 
And this may be considered as among the plainest evidences 
of the spurious origin of the epistles. There was a tradi- 
tion that the great philosopher had two wives, which had 
its foundation in the supposed testimony of Aristotle, in his 
book 7T£pi svyeveiag, concerning Nobility. But Plutarch sus- 
pects that book to be spurious; and it is observable that neither 
Plato nor Xenophon makes any mention of Myrto. Polygamy 
being against the law of the commonwealth, Hieronymus 
Rhodius sets up a statute, made in the days of Socrates, au- 
thorising, on account of the scarcity of the people, marriage 



86 SPURIOUS GREEK EPISTLES. 

with two women at one time. But as no mention is made of 
this statute by any other author, and there is little intelli- 
gence in the provisions of it, Dr. Bentley seems to have 
very reasonable ground for supposing it to have been the off- 
spring of invention, for supporting the story of the two wives. 
In the same collection of letters, too, there are some which 
suppose Socrates to have but one wife ; and Xenophon, in a 
kind letter to Xantippe, in which he makes much of her and 
her little ones, says not a word about the other wife. 

It is from Xenophon that we have this ill report of the 
temper and behaviour of Xantippe, so that he must have 
played a very double part, if while he was writing this com- 
plimentary epistle to the lady, he was traducing her in the 
accounts he was preparing for posterity. It seems that it 
was only from him that Xantippe had the character of scold 
assigned her, as Plato and the other Socratics are silent on this 
head. In the ridicule which was aimed at Socrates by the 
comedians, his scolding wife is never alluded to ; and Athe- 
naeus suspects the whole to have been a calumny. The letter 
from Xenophon to Xantippe is as follows : 



LITTLE TIME AFTER THE DEATH OF SOCRATES. 

I have committed to the hands of Euphron, the Megarite, six 
small measures of wheaten cakes, and eight drachms, also a new 
cloak for winter wear. Accept these trifles, and be assured that 
Euclid and Terpsion are very good and worthy persons, full of 
kind feelings towards you, and of respect to the memory of 
Socrates. When the children shew an inclination to come to 
us, do not oppose their wishes, as it is but a little way for them 
to come to Megara. My good lady, let the abundance of the 
tears you have shed, suffice. To mourn longer will do no good, 
but rather harm. Remember what Socrates said, and endea- 
vour to follow his precepts and counsels. By incessant grief, 
you will greatly injure yourself and the children. These are 
young Socrateses, and it not only becomes us to support them 



SPURIOUS GREEK EPISTLES. 87 

while we live, but to endeavour to continue in life for their 
sakes. Since if you, or I, or any other who feels a tender 
concern for the children of the deceased Socrates, should die, 
they will suffer loss by being deprived of a protector, and a 
contributor to their support and subsistence. Wherefore try to 
live for these children ; which can only be done by attending 
to the means of preserving your life. But grief is among the 
things opposed to life, as those can testify who experience 
its hurtful effects. The gentle Apollodorus, for so he is called, 
and Dion, give you praise for not receiving assistance from 
any body standing in no particular relation to you. You say 
you abound, and you are much to be commended for so 
speaking of yourself: as far as I and your other intimate 
friends are able to assist you, you shall feel no want. Take 
courage then, Xantippe, and let none of the good instructions 
of Socrates be lost, for you know in what honour that great 
man was held by us ; and consider well the example he has 
left us by his death. For my own part, I really think his 
death was a great benefit to us all, if it be regarded in the 
light in which it ought to be. 2 



Five epistles have come down to us as having been written 
by Euripides, and these were said by Apollonides, who wrote 
a treatise on false history, to have been forged by Sabirius 
Polio, " the same who counterfeited the letters of Aratus." 
The Greek Professor at Cambridge, Dr. Joshua Barnes, who 
produced an edition of the works of Euripides, seemed jto have 
the fullest conviction of the genuineness of these letters ; but 
Dr. Bentley has added his weighty opinion to that of Apollo- 
nides, to throw an entire discredit upon them. Every letter 
seems to contain the matter of its own detection and ex- 

2 Xenophon's return from his Asiatic expedition was not till some time after 
the death of Socrates, so that this letter could not have been written from Me- 
gara so recently after that event, as by the contents it would appear to have 
been. Nor does it seem probable that he was at Megara at all after his return, 
for he did not leave Agesilaus till he went to settle at Scyllum. (See Diog. 
Laert. ii. 52.) 



88 SPURIOUS GREEK EPISTLES. 

posure ; especially one of them, which is supposed to have 
been written from the court of Archelaus, king of Mace- 
donia, in which, in answer to some reproaches which had 
been cast upon him for his going from Athens, he declares 
himself to pay no regard to what might be said of him at 
Athens by Agatho or Mesatus. Now this Agatho, unfortu- 
nately for the credit of Sabirius Polio, 3 the inventor of the 
letters, was all this while himself at the court of Archelaus, 
with Euripides. 4 The injury done to Euripides by Cephiso- 
phon seems to have been unknown to or overlooked by the 
fabricator of these letters, when he addresses one of his letters 
to the person so named. Other inconsistencies, puerilities, 
and improbabilities, supply an internal evidence sufficiently 
strong to bring these letters of the tragic poet under a pretty 
decisive charge of forgery. The letters of Aratus are also con- 
sidered as the invention of the same Sabirius Polio : but they 
are not extant, so that no judgment can be formed of the 
credit due to them but what is affected by the suspicion 
suggested by the forgeries in such frequent practice by the 
sophists. 

One of these sophists was doubtless the author of the 
collection given to the public under the name of Alciphron, 
who, some say, lived in some part of the fourth century; 
while others assign him a much earlier date, even anterior 
to Lucian, whom they charge with having borrowed from him 
without acknowledgment. 5 They are clearly supposititious 
and imitative epistles, intended to represent the manners of 
the Athenian Greeks in the most common intercourse of 
society, wherein parasites and courtezans make a prominent 
figure. The composition of the letters is not in bad Greek, 6 

3 Bentley queries whether we should not read Sabinius or Sabidius Pollio ; 
as there was no such Roman family as the Sabirii, or such a surname as Polio. 

4 See ^Llian. Var, Hist. 1. ii. c. 21. 

5 Saxius places Alciphron between Lucian and Aristaenetus ; Lucian being 
the author, and Aristaenetus the imitator of his diction. Onomasticon. 

6 There are several words occurring in Alciphron which are not to be 
found in ancient Greek writers, but clearly of modern adoption : as ev<pr}/j.ia, 
pro laudatione; ewiarvrpHi', notione coercendi; Trpociravtx^v, deditum,inten- 
tum esse. 



SPURIOUS GREEK EPISTLES. 89 

and is sometimes characterised by a portion of wit and 
humour; but the topics are for the most part unimportant 
and uninteresting. It seems probable, however, that the 
writer had the means of acquainting himself with the tone 
and characteristics of the sort of intercourse supposed to be 
carried on by the correspondence which he exhibits. If 
we suppose these letters to present a pretty accurate picture 
of the manners and intercourse of the sort of persons be- 
tween whom the correspondence is carried on, it would be 
injustice towards the character of the ancient Athenians to 
receive them as specimens generally applicable to that people. 
The parasites which these letters bring before us were charac- 
ters in very low estimation. They were in remote times persons 
of some distinction, being invested with the office of superin- 
tending the public or rather the sacred granaries, where the 
corn was deposited for the sacrifices and services of the temple, 
and had the name given them in reference to that duty, being 
compounded of two terms, napa and mroq, signifying their 
place to be near the corn. From this honourable station they 
sunk in later times to the low and illiberal condition of depen- 
dents and flatterers at the tables of the great, being probably 
so increased in number that the supernumeraries were obliged 
to look for subsistence where they could find it ; or the name 
might be given in ridicule to such as were called in to assist 
at feasts and luxurious entertainments. The Romans, under 
the emperors, had also their parasites, but they appear no- 
where in so base a plight as in these letters of Alciphron, and 
the pages of Athenseus. The plays of Menander were, no 
doubt, well furnished with these characters, from which Terence 
has transplanted them. Allusions to them are not unfre- 
quent in Horace and Juvenal. But it is in Alciphron that we see 
the parasites in their most odious colours ; and in connecting 
them with the ordinary train of Athenian entertainments, we 
cannot but suspect those entertainments to have been very 
deficient in dignity and decency. If the work exhibited to the 
world under the title of Alciphron 's Letters, and the letters col- 
lected by Aldus Minutius and Leo Allatius, and others, could 



90 SPURIOUS GREEK EPISTLES. 

be received as genuine, we should indeed have before us a 
very interesting display of manners and familiar intercourse 
among the best instructed as well as the most ignorant portions 
of society in ancient Greece ; but the whole mass appears to 
be worthy of little credit. They can only be regarded as pic- 
tures of manners more or less representative of the originals, 
according to the distance of the times in which they were 
composed from the times to which they relate, or the powers 
of observation and discrimination exerted in the execution of 
the portraits. The reader will find Alciphron's letters among 
the Greek epistles printed by Aldus, who has collected a 
great body of letters in that language, imputed to thirty-five 
different authors : and though what he has produced in this 
department of learning is far from being genuine gold, the 
impressions are sometimes well executed, and worthy of being- 
preserved as products of skill and ingenuity. As a compila- 
tion, they bear testimony to the industry of one who, under 
the patronage of Leo X. laboured with as much success as 
any in that age towards recovering and elucidating Greek 
literature, and promoting the objects of the celebrated Greek 
academy of Leo's institution : in all which valuable labours 
he gratefully acknowledges the zealous services of the learned 
Greeks whom the accomplished pontiff abovenamed had 
attracted to his court. 7 

7 Leo X. Pontifex Romarms ipsam propemodum Graeciam in Itaiiam 
quasi in novam Coloniam deduxit. Pueros enim ex tota Graecia, in quibus 
vis ingenii et bona indoles inesse videbatur, cum suis praeceptoribus, Romam 
evocavit; ut linguam Romani suam ipsis comraodius traderent, vicissimque 
suara illi Romanis. Morhonus in Polyhistor, 1. iv. c. 6. 



91 



CHAPTER IX. 

GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 

The Greek epistles of heathen writers, entitled to be regarded 
as genuine, which have come down to us, are, for the most 
part, studied and elaborate compositions, the vehicles of argu- 
ment or disquisition on matters of general interest or contem- 
plative enquiry. The number generally ascribed to Plato is 
thirteen : 1 but some assign two of the number to Dion — the 
first and the fifth ; though the Aldine edition gives both to 
Plato. Part of one of them runs thus : 



PLATO TO THE KINDRED AND ASSOCIATES OF DION. 

I perceive by your letters that I am expected to give you 
credit for holding the same opinions as were entertained by 
Dion; and you exhort me to act in conjunction w T ith you as 

1 ETTKTroXai r\BiK<xi y XIII. according to Fabricius — 1. Dionis — 2. and 3. 
Plato to Dionysius — 4. to Dion — 5. to Perdiccas — 6. to Hermias, Erastus, 
and Coriscus — 7 and 8. to the friends of Dion — 9. to Archytas of Taren- 
tum — 10. to Aristodorus, or, according to Laertius, Aristodemus — 11. to 
Leodamas — 12. again to Archytas; and 13. to Dionysius. There appear 
to be three MSS. of Plato's epistles in the Vatican, of which the first has six 
epistles; the second, thirteen; and the third, fourteen. In the library of L. 
de Medici at Florence, there are two copies, one having eight and the other 
thirteen epistles. Suidas acknowledges thirteen under 'EvTrparrstv, which was 
the salutation used by Plato ; while others used x at P Elv , or yaQuv, or evdiaysiv, 
or evXoyeiv, &c. Some of these letters are mentioned by Laertius: 10. 
to Aristodemus, and 12. to Archytas. The third, to Dionysius, has been main- 
tained by Bentley to be genuine ; but Meinursius has declared not only that 
epistle, but all the rest, to be spurious " in judicio de quibusdam Socraticorum 
reliquiis." See Comment. Socrat. regise Gottingensis, Ann. 1 783, Classis Histor. 
et Philolog. — But Guil. Gottlieb. Tennemar contra Meinursium disputans, 
has maintained the genuineness of the epistles, p. 17, et seq. though he doubts 
as to a part of Ep. 13. And Wesseling contends for the genuineness of the 
whole of Ep. 13. So that the reader must be left mainly to decide for himself 
from the internal evidence. 



92 GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 

much as is possible in speech and action. Truly, if you have 
the same sentiments and objects which he had, I shall readily 
make a common cause with you. But if you have not, it will 
be necessary to deliberate frequently on the subject. What 
his thoughts and desires were, I can state to you clearly, not 
from conjecture, but from certain knowledge. 

When I first came to Syracuse, being near forty years old, 
the age of Dion was the same as that of Hipparinus 2 is at 
present ; and the opinion and views which he then entertained 
he persevered in to the end — that the Syracusans ought to be 
free, and governed by the best laws. So that it would not be 
matter of astonishment if some god had raised the thoughts 
of Dion into agreement with his own on the subject of govern- 
ment. But the circumstances which operated to bring this 
about are worthy of the attention of young and old. I will 
endeavour to relate the affair to you from the beginning, for the 
present state of things makes such an exposition seasonable. 

When I was a young man, I partook of the feelings and 
aspirations common to that time of life. I determined as 
soon as I had the disposal of myself, to take a part in the 
public business of the city. In the mean time, public affairs 
were thrown into the following predicament. The existing 
polity being condemned by the greater part of the people, a 
change took place : fifty-one persons being chosen governors, 
eleven of them presided in the city, and ten in Piraeus; 
and each of these had an active concern in the direction of 
the city business ; but the remaining thirty were invested with 
supreme authority. 

Some of these rulers being of my particular acquaintance, 
called on me to give my attention to public affairs as a study 
for which I was well fitted. This invitation touched and inte- 
rested me, as it was natural it should, considering my youth. I 
thought it properly belonged to them to govern the city, so as to 
lead it from its actual state of immorality to habits of probity 
and virtue ; and to me diligently to attend to the course of their 
proceedings. But the conduct of these men soon convinced 
me that the former polity, bad as it was, was a golden period 
2 Son of Dion. 



GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 93 

in comparison with that which they were instituting : for in 
addition to their other numerous instances of iniquitous govern- 
ment, they sent my venerable friend Socrates, and who, I do 
not hesitate to say, was the most upright person of the time, 
together with certain others, to bring back by force one of the 
citizens who had withdrawn himself from their tyranny, that 
he might be punished with death ; hoping thus to implicate 
Socrates with them in the conduct of affairs, whether he were 
willing or not. He refused, however, to comply, and deter- 
mined to expose himself to every danger, rather than be a par- 
taker of their infamous proceedings. All which, and other 
transactions of a similar character, filled me with indignation, 
and determined me to withdraw myself from the evil men of 
that time. 

Not long after this the thirty tyrants were made an end of, 
and the whole of the then existing polity was subverted. 
Again, therefore, I was induced to engage in political affairs, 
though with less devotion to them than before. But many 
circumstances occurred, from the disordered state in which 
things still remained, to excite one's honest indignation. It 
was not to be wondered at that, in times so disturbed by 
changes, those that were opposed to the existing authorities 
should be punished with more than due severity ; although, 
it must be admitted that those who returned to their obedience 
to the state experienced a very equitable treatment. It so 
happened that certain persons invested with authority brought 
our friend Socrates into a court of justice, on a charge of 
great impiety, — an accusation which Socrates, of all men, 
the least merited. Some led him along as an impious person, 
while others gave sentence against him, and condemned him 
to death. Thus they destroyed a man, who, blameless in 
all other respects, had refused to concur in the infamous 
proceeding towards one of those who had fled from his oppres- 
sors. When I perceived how things were going on, and who 
had the power of controlling and influencing the laws and 
manners of the state and people, I felt, as I grew in years 
and experience, more and more the difficulty of intermeddling 
with effect in the controul and conduct of public administra- 



94 GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 

tions ; and I saw it to be wholly impossible to be done with- , 
out the co-operation of faithful friends and associates, whom 
at that time it was not easy to find ; for our city was then no 
longer governed in accordance with the manners and habits of 
our fathers, and it was not possible with any ease or satisfac- 
tion of mind to conform one's self to those of recent institu- 
tion. The letter as well as the spirit of the old laws were totally 
corrupted. It might seem not a little wonderful that I, who was 
at first so ardently desirous of engaging in public business, 
when I beheld all things running into disorder, should so soon 
be disheartened. I did not, however, withdraw my attention 
from them, but determined to observe their course, to see whe- 
ther some improvement might not take place in them, and in 
the entire polity respecting them, and still to wait a fit oppor- 
tunity of acting. At length I became satisfied that all the 
states then existing were badly governed : and that as to their 
laws, and the administration of them, matters were not within 
the reach of remedy, unless some fundamental plan of ameliora- 
tion could be adopted, seconded by some accompanying good 
fortune. It is a tribute due to sound philosophy to declare 
my conviction that it is from its teaching only that we can 
be instructed in the management either of our public or private 
affairs. Hence we may rest in the proposition, that humanity 
will continue to suffer under the evils of misgovernment till 
either the philosophic portion of society are invested with the 
management of all political affairs, or those who are in the 
actual management, by some divine influence on their dis- 
positions, are made to cultivate philosophy. With these im- 
pressions, I first travelled to Italy and Sicily. 

On my arrival in those countries, I was soon dissatisfied 
with the opinions there entertained of what constitutes a 
happy life, which was thought to consist in repletion twice a 
day, and in all the sensualities in which the vicious and volup- 
tuous place their enjoyment. I was dissatisfied with these 
manners and habits, because I was well aware that no man 
under heaven educated in them, could ever attain to wisdom, 
self-controul, or any estimable qualities, however admirable his 



GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 95 

natural disposition might be. With these sentiments I came 
to Syracuse, perhaps by the guidance of fortune. There I 
attached myself to the company of Dion, who was then a young 
man, and in the discourses I addressed to him, I encouraged 
him to pursue such a line of conduct as might make him the 
author of most good to mankind ; not knowing that I was 
thus preparing the way for the dissolution of the existing 
tyranny. Dion was very docile, as in general matters, so also 
in the matters treated of in my discourses. He so accurately 
comprehended and so zealously attended to my teaching, that 
he surpassed in this respect all the young men with whom 
I have ever been acquainted. He determined to pass the 
remainder of his life in a manner very different from the 
generality of the Italians and Sicilians, — in cultivating virtue 
rather than luxury and pleasure. For this reason he was an 
object of aversion to those who had conformed their lives to 
tyrannic institutions. 

Sometime after this he perceived that his sentiments, 
the fruit of sound instruction, were shared by other per- 
sons, not a very numerous class, among whom was Diony- 
sius the younger. He had hopes, too, that if this disposition 
should spread, both his own life and that of the Syracusans 
in general would be greatly more happy. On this account he 
thought I ought to come to Syracuse with the utmost celerity, 
that I might promote these good beginnings; remembering 
how easily by my conversation he was inflamed with the desire 
of leading a life the best and most becoming. If he could 
but enkindle this desire in Dionysius, as he was attempting 
to do, he hoped to render life happy throughout Syracuse, 
unexposed to the calamities and outrages which then pre- 
vailed. Dion being persuaded of these things, prevailed upon 
Dionysius to send for me, and himself requested that I would 
by all means come with the greatest speed, before certain 
other persons associating with Dionysius might seduce him 
from a course of life so worthy of his preference. " Why," 
said he, " should we wait for a better opportunity than that 
which now presents itself to us, under a certain divine guid- 



96 GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 

ance ? " He, likewise, reminded me of the political state of 
Italy and Sicily, the ascendancy of Dionysius, his vigorous 
age, and his vehement desire to advance in learning and phi- 
losophy. He informed me how much inclined his own kindred 
and friends were to the principles and conduct which I incul- 
cated and enforced ; and that he was not by himself sufficient 
to make Dionysius decidedly embrace them. He added that 
now was the time, if ever, which encouraged a hope that the 
persons so disposed as before mentioned, would in course 
of time become philosophers, and rulers of states made 
powerful by wise government. With these and other like 
arguments he urged me to comply with his request. But I 
was distrustful of the result, as young men are hasty, and are 
often borne along by the feelings of the moment in a direction 
contrary to their better judgments. 

I knew, however, that the disposition of Dion himself was 
naturally grave, and that he was of an age sufficiently ripe for 
these undertakings. After some doubt and deliberation, I came 
to the resolution that I ought to go, being persuaded that a 
sincere intention to aid in establishing a perfect system of 
legislation and polity, could never be furnished with a fitter 
time for making the experiment. I considered, indeed, that 
there was one person whom if I could bring over to my 
scheme, I should accomplish all the good in my contempla- 
tion. With these views and in this confidence, and not from 
any such motives as have been imputed to me, I left my home. 
I felt how much I should sink in self respect, if I should 
appear to myself to be nothing more than a man of words, 
never accomplishing any practical good. I was fearful, too, 
lest the hospitality and friendship of Dion should expose him 
to danger; who, if he should fall into any calamity, or be 
banished by Dionysius, would naturally fly hither, and thus 
address me : 

" I come to you, O Plato, an exile, though wanting neither 
horses nor soldiers to oppose my enemies, but wanting 
words, and the power of persuasion, which I know form 
your great qualification for converting young men to the 



GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 97 

principles and practice of justice and probity, and uniting 
them in a virtuous fellowship and friendship with each other ; 
and your deficiency in the proper use and application of those 
talents has occasioned me to leave Syracuse, and to come 
hither. As to what relates to myself, indeed, this will bring 
you less disgrace, but as to the credit of that philosophy 
which you are in the habit of exalting so high, and which 
you complain is dishonoured by other men, are you not now 
guilty of betraying it as well as me? Surely, if we had 
been inhabitants of Megara, you would have come to my 
assistance upon being called, or I should have looked upon 
you as of all men the most depraved ; and now you seek an 
excuse in the length and labour of the journey ; but you 
greatly mistake in supposing that this excuse will save you 
from disgrace." 

If Dion had thus addressed me, I should certainly have 
been at a loss for a .becoming answer. I therefore came to 
Syracuse, in compliance with these arguments from reason 
and justice, leaving my own occupations which I was justified 
in pursuing under a tyranny to which neither my habits nor 
the principles I professed and taught were reconcileable. But 
when I came thither, I maintained the freedom of my mind, 
being observant both of the claims of hospitality and the 
integrity of the philosopher. The destiny which had placed me 
at the court of Dionysius, would have entailed disgrace upon 
me, if I had been in any respects compliant, effeminate, or 
vicious. On my arrival, I found all things about Dionysius 
tending to sedition, and many calumnies afloat concerning 
the ambitious projects of Dion. I defended Dion to the 
utmost of my power ; but was able to effect but little, for in 
the fourth month after my arrival, Dionysius accused Dion of 
treasonable plots to usurp the throne of Syracuse, and to his 
own disgrace had him conveyed into exile in a small vessel. 
After this, all of us who were the friends of Dion were appre- 
hensive that Dionysius would accuse us of being conspirators 
with Dion. It was even reported in Syracuse that I was 
put to death by the tyrant, as the cause of everything that 

H 



98 GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 

had happened. But Dionysius perceiving our alarms, and 
dreading some consequences from them injurious to himself, 
received us all very encouragingly, and me especially he 
desired to confide in him, requesting that I would by all 
means remain with him, as my continuing in Syracuse might 
be of advantage to him. He, therefore, importuned me to 
stay ; induced to make this request, no doubt, by some neces- 
sity or interest of his own, which are the selfish motives by 
which tyrants are usually actuated. With a view to prevent 
my departure, he compelled me to reside in the Acropolis, 
from which place it was impossible for any master of a vessel 
to take me away without the tyrant's order. Nor was there 
any merchant or magistrate who, on seeing me leaving the 
country, would not immediately have brought me back to 
Dionysius; since the general understanding now was, that 
the tyrant had conceived a wonderful affection for me. And 
if the truth be spoken, I do believe this was the case. But 
the terms I was expected to be on with him, were that I was 
to praise him more, and regard him as more my friend, than 
Dion. This relation between us he took wonderful pains to 
establish. He neglected, however, the honourable means of 
effecting his purpose, if it could have been effected, by cul- 
tivating a familiar companionship with me, and by attending 
to my discourses and philosophical instructions. This he 
seemed fearful of doing, lest, as was told him by my calum- 
niators, he should be impeded in his designs, and Dion should 
attain to the chief management of the state. However, I 
endured everything, still holding the opinions which I brought 
with me to Syracuse, and resolved to try if by any means 
Dionysius could be induced to live the life of a lover of 
wisdom. But he resisted, and rendered ineffectual all my 
endeavours. Such are the particulars of my first visit to 
Sicily, and of my conduct in that country. 



Of the ten epistles which are included in the published 
works of Isocrates, that which is addressed to Dionysius, and 



GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 99 

which is the tenth in order, is clearly a fabrication, though 
it has found a place in the editions of Vossius, Stephanus, 
and Aldus ; — the other nine have every appearance of being 
genuine, and do not seem to be suspected by the learned. As 
the epistles of Isocrates are among the few Greek specimens 
of lettter-writing which have come down to us with an accre- 
ditation that entitles them to be received as genuine pro- 
ductions, two of them shall be here presented in an English 
dress. 



ISOCRATES TO ALEXANDER (SON OF PHILIP OF MACEDON). 

When writing to your father, I should feel myself guilty of 
an indiscretion were I neither to address or notice you in any 
special manner, living as you do with your father ; if it were 
but to prevent those who know me not, from supposing that 
age has enfeebled, if not entirely robbed me of my under- 
standing. Whereas the truth is, that the faculties which, 
notwithstanding the decay of my strength, yet remain with 
me, are not unworthy of the character I sustained when in the 
vigour of my age. I hear from all that you are a lover of 
your kind, a lover of Athens, and a lover of wisdom; not 
pursuing an idle and foolish, but a prudent and intelligent 
course: that you do not bestow your regard upon such of our 
citizens as have no concern for their own solid interests, 
giving themselves up to their evil propensities, but upon those 
with whom the strictest intercourse and communion imparts 
no taint or injury to the principles of their associates, and 
whom the wise may approach without endangering their own 
morals: and that of the various philosophies you do not 
reject that which belongs to dialectics and disputation ; 
giving it its due weight and importance in the intercourse 
of private life, though you do not consider it as a befitting 
study for those who are set over the people, or have the charge 
of monarchical government. It is a study, in your opinion, 
unsuitable to persons whose thoughts and purposes raise 
them above ordinary men ; who ought not to expend their 



100 GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 

strength in controversies with the citizens, or to afford to 
others the opportunity or licence of contradiction. In this 
sort of exercitation, it seems, you take no delight ; but you 
prefer the study and cultivation of eloquence, especially that 
which is conversant with topics of daily agitation, and which 
we employ in our public deliberations, and by the aid of 
which you becomingly impress upon those who are subject to 
your command how to demean themselves, and how to make 
just distinctions between what is fair and honourable, and 
what is of a contrary character; giving encouragement or 
reproof, as the several cases may seem to call for the one or 
the other. As long as you are occupied with these objects, you 
give proof of your wisdom. It is thus that you inspire con- 
fidence into your father and others, that as you advance in 
years, you will be more and more confirmed in these principles, 
excelling others in understanding, as your father has surpassed 
all in greatness. 



1SOCRATES TO THE SONS 3 OF JASON, (LATE SOVEREIGN OF 
PHER^ IN THESSALY,) DISSUADING THEM FROM ASSUM- 
ING EMPIRE. 

One of those persons who were sent ambassadors to you 
informed me that, being called by you aside from the others, 
he was asked if I could be persuaded to leave my own country, 
and sojourn with you. Impressed with the memory of the 
hospitality of Jason and Polyaces, I should gladly come to 
you; for I know that such intercourse would be profitable 
to all of us. But many considerations stand in the way of 
my wishes ; principally my inability to make journeys. And, 
indeed, it is hardly consistent with the age at which I am 
arrived, to travel into foreign countries. Furthermore, it 
seems to me, that all who should hear of my wandering, 
would form an unfavourable opinion of me, if, after having all 
my life cultivated repose and quiet, I should undertake long 
journeys in my old age, when, if I had passed my time abroad, 

3 They had been disciples of Isocrates. 



GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 101 

it would have been proper and becoming to end my days at 
home. Add to this, I am really afraid of the changes which 
may happen in my own city. For I must be plain : I perceive 
that all the alliances which are formed with us are soon dis- 
solved. And if this should happen with respect to yourselves, 
how should I be able to keep clear of the imputation of crime, 
and avoid other perils? Ought I not to feel ashamed if, in 
behalf of my own city, I should appear to sacrifice my engage- 
ments with you, or, for the sake of my engagements with you, 
to forget my duty to my own city? These interests being 
opposed, I do not know how I should be able to acquit myself 
satisfactorily towards both. 

These considerations have convinced me that it is not in 
my power to do what I could wish. But I do not feel that it 
is becoming in me to dwell so upon my own concerns as to 
leave yours unattended to. ' The matters, therefore, which 
were the topics of my discourse when in your company, I 
will endeavour as well as I can to discuss in correspond- 
ence with you. And do not suppose that in writing this 
letter to you, I am influenced by ostentation rather than 
friendship. I have not yet become so foolish as not to know 
that I am not now qualified to write better than when in the 
flower of my age. I am fully aware that by sending forth 
inferior performances I shall only write to sink below the 
reputation I at present enjoy. Again, if vanity, rather than 
affection, were my motive in writing, I should not have chosen 
a subject so easy to say something to the purpose upon, but I 
should have adopted others more showy and fertile in argument. 
Indeed, formerly, I never sought distinction by handling such 
subjects, my object being rather to treat of those which had 
been overlooked by others. Nor have I now intruded myself 
into your concerns with any design to shew how I can treat 
of these matters, but, perceiving you to have at this time many 
serious affairs to conduct, I am desirous of declaring to you 
my opinion concerning them. I think, indeed, that mine is 
the properest period for giving counsel. Old age is taught by 
experience, and thereby qualified to point out what is best to 
be done in difficult circumstances, such as those in which you 



102 GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 

are now placed; though I grant mine is not the age for 
treating any subject gracefully, scientifically, and elaborately. 
I shall be content, therefore, if I can discourse on the matter 
in hand in a coherent and connected manner. 

Do not be surprised if I seem to be repeating what you 
have heard before from me. Some things before urged by 
me have again spontaneously presented themselves; other 
things I shall purposely make use of again as best for my 
purpose. It would be folly in me if, when I perceive other 
men adopting my arguments, I should think myself not at 
liberty to make a fresh use of them myself. I have prefaced 
what I have to say with this apology, because the very first 
observation I shall make will be one of the most trite and fami- 
liar. I have been accustomed to say to those who have attended 
my lectures, that their primary object should be to consider 
well what they proposed to themselves to effect by their 
speeches, and how best to divide and arrange their subjects. 
And when they shall have with the greatest care determined 
this point, I have been used to tell them they must search 
for the ideas best calculated to promote their final purpose. 
This has been my great dogma on the subject of oratory. But 
it is equally a fundamental consideration in the conduct of 
those other matters in which you are at present engaged : for 
nothing can be done correctly, unless you first consider and 
decide on what plan you mean to regulate your life for the 
time to come, and what glory you will aspire to ; whether 
that which comes from willing or from unwilling minds. 
Having decided these points, the next thing you will have to 
do will be to consider seriously how the actions of each day 
may be made to conspire to the accomplishment of what has 
been your aim and purpose from the beginning. And by this 
mode of enquiring and reasoning) you will have before you a 
determinate object, and a great and beneficial scope to which 
the faculties of the soul may be directed. If you lay down 
no plan of life, but submit yourself to the guidance of events, 
you will be always rambling and unsteady in your resolves, 
and meet with many failures. 

Possibiv some of those who have chosen to live a careless 






GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EP1STEES. 103 

life will affect to ridicule such reasonings. They may say, 
too, that I ought to ground myself upon some certain prin- 
ciples. I will, therefore, without more delay, explicitly declare 
my sentiments. In plain terms, then, it seems to me that 
the lives of private men are greatly more happy than the 
lives of sovereigns. I esteem the honour which men of ele- 
vated thoughts confer by their applause, to be far more gratify- 
ing than what is received from men living under the sway of 
tyrants. I am aware that I shall have many opposed to me 
in sentiment, especially those by whom you are surrounded : 
and I doubt not they will to their utmost urge you to take 
empire upon you. But they have narrow views of the sub- 
ject, and yield themselves to the delusion of a selfish ambition. 
They are looking to power, gain, and pleasure, with a full 
expectation of enjoying them. But the troubles, fears, and 
calamities which beset those who govern, and their adherents 
also, they entirely overlook. They do not see that they 
expose themselves to the same hazards and evils to which 
those are subject who are guilty of the basest and most 
nefarious actions. It is not that those persons are wholly 
ignorant of the evils attendant upon their situations, but they 
persuade themselves that they shall extract all the good, and 
shall avoid all the dangers and misfortunes which are incident 
to this condition : and they think they can so order things 
around them as to place themselves out of the reach of danger, 
and in near connexion with every advantage. When men think 
and act in this way, I grudge them the security in which they 
live. Indeed, I should feel myself disgraced, if, when setting 
up for an adviser of others, I should neglect theirs for my own 
private interest, and not rather, putting myself aside, and all 
considerations of personal advantage, give them the best advice 
which it is in my power to afford them. Since, therefore, 
these are my sentiments, I expect to be listened to by you 
with favour and attention. 



In Herodotus and Thucydides we find letters attributed to 
the generals and other great characters, which their histories 



104 GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 

present to us ; and these letters are the more interesting, as 
they, are characteristically interwoven with the sequel and 
conduct of the narrative. They may not have been the 
identical letters written by the persons to whom they are 
ascribed, but they must, nevertheless, be considered as speci- 
mens of letter-writing in the days of the historians them- 
selves; and being part of the res gest& belonging to the 
portions of history in progress under their pens, they would 
naturally keep as close to the truth as their means and oppor- 
tunities would enable them. 

Polycrates, to whom the two following letters, given us by 
Herodotus, were written, is said to have lived to the year 
522 b. c. ; having governed Samos about forty-two years. 
According to the accounts which have come down to us, 
he was remarkable for the constant current of prosperity 
which attended him, till he was treacherously put to death by 
Orcetes, the Persian governor of Magnesia, on the Mseander. 
Amasis, the king of Egypt, whose fortunes were also remark- 
able, having risen from the condition of a common soldier to 
the throne of Egypt, on which he sat forty-four years, was so 
convinced that the uniform felicity of Polycrates must at last 
terminate in some signal calamity, that he is said to have 
advised him to anticipate the turn of his fortune by bringing 
some loss or trouble upon himself. Polycrates, following this 
advice, threw one of his most precious jewels into the sea; 
but after a few days of regret he received a present of a fish, 
in which was found the jewel so much esteemed by him. He 
was at length invited to Magnesia by Oroetes, and on his 
arrival put to death by his order, from no other motive, as 
was said, but the desire of terminating the career of his envied 
felicity. 

" Amasis saith thus to Polycrates (Ajuaaig UoXvKparu <l)$e 
Xsyu) : — It is, indeed, very gratifying to hear of the pros- 
perity of a friend, but your great successes do not altogether 
please me, knowing, as I do, the envy of the gods ; and I 
cannot but wish, both for myself and for those I love, that their 
prosperous and adverse fortunes should be interchanged. I 
desire my life to be chequered with good and evil, rather than 



GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 105 

to be uniformly successful : for never have I heard of a man 
with whom all things for a length of time have prospered, 
that has not at last come to a ruinous and disastrous end. 
Be guided then by me, and deal thus with your good fortune. 
Consider what is that thing now in your possession which 
you deem to be most precious, the loss of which would most 
afflict your mind ; cast it so effectually away from you, that it 
may be seen of men no more. But if there should not after 
this succeed a course of good fortune to the misfortune thus 
voluntarily endured, and so interchangeably, for the future, 
pursue the remedy which I propose." 4 

The epistle of Orcetes is in these terms : — " Orcetes saith 
thus to Polycrates (Opon-rjc UoXvKparu wSe Aeya) : I under- 
stand that you are projecting great things, and that you 
have not money to carry them into execution. Now, if you 
will act as I suggest, you will establish yourself and save me. 
For the king, Cambyses, is plotting my destruction, as I am 
certainly informed. Do you, therefore, transport me and my 
substance from this place ; and then take part of that same 
substance for your own, and suffer me to enjoy the rest. 
With such means you may acquire the enrpire of all Greece. 
But if you mistrust what I say concerning my wealth, send 
to me some one in whom you place confidence, and I will 
shew it to him." 5 

The letter of Pausanias to the king of Persia is in the 
following strain : — " Pausanias, the general of Sparta, being 
minded to do thee a kindness, sends back to thee the men he 
has captured with the sword. And the thing I purpose, if it 
please thee, is to marry thy daughter, and to place Sparta, 
and all Greece, under thy government. I think I can do 
this, if we consult together upon it. If, therefore, such a 
plan as .this is agreeable to you, send some one whom you 
can trust to the sea-side, through whom we may confer with 
each other." 6 

The letter of Pausanias has the Spartan flavour in it, and 
is expressed precisely in the terms we might have expected 

4 Herod. Thai. 40. 5 Ibid. 132. B Thucyd. 1. i. s. 128. 



106 GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 

from such a man. It is pregnant, short, and decisive. It 
seems written rather with the point of a sword than with the 
pen. The king's answer is equally characteristic : and if 
invented by Thucydides, is neverthelesss in perfect character 
and keeping, as are all the strokes and touches which give 
effect to his living pictures. 

" Thus saith Xerxes the king to Pausanias (£l§e \eyzi 
BcKjiXevg Eep^rig Uavaavia) : The benefit which thou hast 
done me respecting the men whom thou hast saved and sent 
to me beyond sea from Byzantium, is registered and engraven 
in our house for ever : and I receive with pleasure your pro- 
posals. Be not therefore remiss, night or day, in the per- 
formance of what you have promised : nor let the cost of gold 
and silver, or the number of soldiers which will be required, 
wheresoever they may be wanted, embarrass you ; but at once 
enter upon a business, both for yourself and me, which will 
be promotive of the dignity and honour of us both, in concert 
with Artabazus, a worthy man, whom I have sent to you for 
that purpose." 7 

We have another letter in Thucydides of an interesting but 
very different character, written by Nicias, the worthy but un- 
fortunate general of the Athenian forces, engaged in a war of 
unprovoked aggression against the people of Syracuse. Gy lip- 
pus, the Lacedemonian commander, at the head of a powerful 
force at sea and on land, composed of Spartans, Corinthians, 
and Syracusans, with their Sicilian confederates, was pressing 
upon the army Under Nicias, and hastening the catastrophe 
that proved so ruinous to Athens and its ill-fated general. 
The great contemporary historian of these events, so decisive 
of the affairs of Greece, thus introduces the letter of Nicias, of 
which one sees no reason to doubt the genuineness : — " Nicias, 
seeing the strength of the enemy and his own necessities to 
be daily increasing, dispatched messengers to Athens, as he 
was wont to do, respecting all the transactions of the war; 
but he felt it especially necessary now, thinking his danger to 
be imminent, to inform the state that unless they, with all 

7 Thucyd. I. i. s. 128. 



GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 107 

speed, sent for those to come away that were there already, 
or sent them an effectual reinforcement, there was no hope of 
safety : and being afraid lest his messengers, from the want 
of adequate powers of expression, or clearness of judgment, or 
from a desire to please the citizens, might fail in describing 
the exact state of things, he wrote a letter, thinking that the 
proper way of making his mind fully known to his country- 
men, (of which no part could now be kept back by the mes- 
senger,) and of furnishing them with a true ground for their 
deliberations. With these letters, and other instructions, the 
messengers repaired to Athens ; and Nicias, in the mean time, 
having provided for the defence of his camp, took care to 
avoid hazarding an encounter with the enemy. The messen- 
gers arrived at Athens in the following winter, and having 
spoken what they were instructed to say, and answered such 
questions as were put to them, presented the letter of Nicias, 
which the city scribe, standing forth, read aloud to the people 
to the following effect : 8 — 

' You are made acquainted, Athenians, by many other 
letters from me with what has passed heretofore ; and of our 
present condition it is no less necessary that you should be 
informed, that you may frame your resolutions upon it. Our 
situation then is this : after we had defeated the Syracusans in 
many engagements, and had built up walls, within which we 
had taken our station, Gylippus, a Lacedemonian, came 
against us, bringing with him an army from Peloponnesus, 
and also from some of the cities of Sicily. We overcame 
him in the first battle, but his superiority in cavalry and 
javelin men forced us, in a second engagement, to retreat, 
and secure ourselves within our fortifications. Nor, indeed, 
can we bring our whole force into the field, as part of our 
army is wanted for the defence of our walls. And they have 
also carried a wall straight up to us, so that we cannot make 
our own wall complete, unless some one should come with a 
large army to our aid, and gain for us this counter-wall. It 
has so fallen out, therefore, that we who considered ourselves 

? Thucyd. 1. vii. s. 11. 



108 GENUINE HEATH EX GREEK EPISTLES. 

as besieging others, have changed places, and become rather 
the besieged, in the occupation of our present position; for we 
cannot move to any distance from the place in which we are 
stationed, on account of the enemy's horse. They have also 
sent to Peloponnesus for another army ; while Gylippus goes 
about the cities of Sicily to persuade such as have as yet 
made no movement, to take part with him in the war, and 
to obtain from others, if he can, an addition to his land force, 
as well as what is necessary for his navy. For it is their 
design, as I hear, to try what they can do against our walls 
with their army, and with their ships at sea. Nor let any of 
you persuade yourselves that it is an arduous undertaking 
for them to attack us at sea. For though our fleet, as was 
well known to the enemy, was at first composed of vessels 
perfectly sound and seaworthy, and our crews in good heart 
and health ; yet now, from being so long out at sea, our ships 
are become leaky, and our men worn out : for we have no 
opportunity for drawing the ships on shore to air and dry them, 
as those of the enemy, which are as good as ours, and more in 
number, keep us in constant expectation of an attack, which 
they seem ou the point of hazarding. It rests with them 
to commence the enterprise when they think fit ; and in the 
mean time they have the means of drying and airing their 
vessels ; for they have not, as we, a station to defend against 
others. These objects we should find it difficult to effect, 
even had we ships enough and to spare, and were not com- 
pelled, as now, to employ them all to secure our position. 
For if we were in the smallest degree to reduce the amount of 
our protecting force, we should be in want of provisions, 
being now hardly able, on account of our proximity to the 
city, to convey the necessary supplies to our fleet. Thence it 
is that our mariners have perished, and are perishing, since 
they are cut off by the enemy's cavalry when they proceed to 
any distance to forage, or procure wood and water. Those who 
attend upon us, now that the two camps are opposite to each 
other, take the opportunity of going over to the enemy : and 
as to the strangers, some having come to us by constraint, 



GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 109 

have presently run off to the cities ; and others, having been 
tempted at first to join us by great wages, and thinking they 
were come to enrich themselves rather than to fight, when, 
contrary to their expectation, they see the enemy prepared to 
contend with us both by sea and land, but especially with 
their navy, partly go off from us upon some pretext into the 
service of the enemy, and partly escape from us as they can, 
having room enough in Sicily. And there are some who, 
having brought hither their Hyrcanian slaves, and persuaded 
the captains of gallies to receive them as their substitutes, 
deprive our naval force of its strength and energy. I write to 
those who well know that a fleet remains in the height of its 
vigour but for a short period; and that the number is small 
of those who are skilled both in launching a galley and 
managing the oar. 

' But the hardest of all is this, that it is not in my power as 
general to order things otherwise, for you Athenians are of a 
disposition difficult to be governed. Nor have we any sources 
from which we can recruit our navy : for we must of neces- 
sity draw our supplies of men from the same place whence 
those came whom we brought with us, and who have been 
consumed in the service : for our confederate cities, Naxus 
and Catana, are not able to supply us. If this one thing more 
shall be added to the present advantages of the enemy — that 
the countries of Italy from which we draw our subsistence, 
seeing our real condition, and the fact of our receiving no help 
from you, shall abandon us for them, — the war will be termi- 
nated for them without a battle, and nothing will remain for 
us but to surrender. I might send you communications more 
pleasing, but surely less profitable, if it be important for you 
to frame your measures upon a certain knowledge of the real 
state of things here. At the same time, well knowing the cha- 
racter of your minds to be this, that though you like to hear 
what is gratifying, yet that afterwards you are apt enough to 
complain, if any thing turns out otherwise than you expected, 
I judged that to state matters just as they were, was my safest 
and most prudent course. 



110 GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 

i And now the conclusion to which you ought to come is 
this — that the conduct neither of soldiers nor commanders 
deserves your censure respecting any of the objects of this ex- 
pedition. But since all Sicily is hostile to us, and the enemy 
is expecting another army from Peloponnesus, it behoves 
you to consider and determine, as the force we now have is 
insufficient to contend with their present number, whether it 
will be proper to recall those who are here, or to send hither 
another army, not less than that which we have, both land 
and naval force, with money not a little; and likewise some 
one to take my place, as I am rendered unable to remain here 
by a disease in my reins. I think I merit your indulgence, 
for when I was in health I performed many good services for 
you in the conduct of your armies. Whatsoever you resolve 
to do, do it at the first coming in of the spring, avoiding pro- 
crastination. For the enemy will not be long in getting his 
reinforcements from Sicily, and though he will be somewhat 
longer in obtaining them from Peloponnesus, yet if you do not 
look well to it, he will elude your discovery, as he did before, 
or be beforehand with you in the quickness of his movements. '" 

The letter above produced, bears a very genuine impression 
of the simple, modest, and sedate character of the unfortunate 
commander; and insinuates pretty plainly the fickle and un- 
grateful treatment with which the Athenian state requited 
the services of their most devoted servants. 

In introducing Alexander the Great to the notice of our 
readers, we will commence with the letter of his father, Philip 
of Macedon, to Aristotle, his learned preceptor, on the birth of 
his renowned son. Aulus Gellius has given us this letter from 
Philip. " &i\nnrog ApLcrroreXei x<up£tv : Know that a son is 
born to me, for which I am grateful to the gods ; not so much 
for the birth of a son, as that he comes into the world in your 
time ; for my hope is that, under your education and instruc- 
tion, he will be worthy both of us, and of the succession to 
the government of this empire." 

Arrian relates, as a report generally received, and to which 
he gave credit, that soon after the battle of Tssus, a conn- 



GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. Ill 

dential eunuch, a principal attendant of the captive queen of 
Persia, Statira, found means, possibly with leave, to go to her 
unfortunate husband. On first sight of him, Darius hastily 
asked if his wife and children were living. The eunuch 
assuring him that not only all were well, but all treated with 
respect as royal personages, equally as before their captivity, 
the monarch's apprehension changed its object. The queen 
was generally said to be the most beautiful woman of the Per- 
sian empire. How, in the usual concealment of the persons of 
women of rank through the eastern nations, hardly less in 
ancient than in modern days, this could be known, unless 
from report of the eunuchs of the palace, Arrian has not 
said ; but his account rather implies that her face had been 
seen by some of the Grecian officers. Darius's next question, 
however, was said to be, " Whether his queen's honour had 
been tarnished, either through her own weakness or by any 
violence V The eunuch protesting, with solemn oaths, that 
she was as pure as when she parted from Darius, and adding 
that Alexander was the best and most honourable of men, 
Darius raised his hands towards heaven, and exclaimed, " O 
great God ! who disposest of the affairs of kings amongst 
men, preserve to me the empire of the Persians and Medes, as 
thou gavest it : but if it be thy will that I am no longer to 
be king of Asia, let Alexander, in preference to all others, 
succeed to my power." 

This account, which Arrian has judged not unworthy of a 
place in his military history of Alexander, is obviously not, like 
numberless stories of private conversations related by Diodo- 
rus, Plutarch, Quintus Curtius, and others, what none who 
were likely to know would be likely to tell ; but, on the con- 
trary, what, no way requiring concealment, the eunuch would 
rather be forward to relate; so that, not improbably, many 
Greeks, and among them some acquainted with his character, 
and able to estimate his veracity, might have had it from him- 
self. It seems altogether not unlikely that the eunuch's report 
was the inducement of Darius to send the deputation to 
Alexander, which reached him at Marathus. 



1 12 GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 

The persons deputed bore a letter from the Persian king, 
representing that, " between Artaxerxes Ochus and Philip 
there had been friendship and alliance : that after the acces- 
sion of Arses, Philip, without provocation from Persia, had 
begun hostilities, which Alexander, passing into Asia, had 
prosecuted to the severe injury of the Persians; whence 
Darius was compelled to place himself at the head of his 
army, to protect his subjects and defend his own inherited 
rights : that God's displeasure had disposed of victory, and it 
now remained for him to solicit, as a king from a king, the 
release of his wife and family, and to offer to treat of peace 
and friendship ; for which purpose he proposed that Alex- 
ander should send ministers to him with sufficient powers." 

Communications of this kind appear to have been always, 
in regular course, laid by Alexander before his council. What 
provoked a reply differing in its character so widely from that of 
Alexander's conduct toward the Persian princesses, and even 
contradicting his reported assurance to them that he had no 
personal enmity toward Darius, ancient history has not said. 
Ground for conjecture seems only furnished by the fact of 
the capture of the Grecian deputies, from whom, or from 
whose writings, information of matters before unknown may 
have been gained. The answer to the Persian, in the form 
of a letter from the Macedonian monarch, is given by Arrian 
in the following terms : — 

" Your predecessors, unprovoked, invaded Macedonia and 
the rest of Greece, to the great injury of the people. I, the 
elected general of the Greeks, have invaded Asia to revenge, 
not that ancient aggression only, but also recent wrongs. 
You supported the Perinthians, who had injured my father. 
Your predecessor, Ochus, sent forces into that part of Thrace 
which is within our dominion . In your own public letters you 
boasted to all the world of being a patron of the conspiracy 
which produced the assassination of my father. You your- 
self, with the eunuch Bagoas, assassinated Arses, and seized 
the empire, in violation of the law of Persia, and in wrong of 
the Persian people. Moreover, you sent your rescripts to the 



GENUINE HEATHEN GREEK EPISTLES. 113 

Greeks, inciting them to war against me, and offering them 
subsidies to support it; which, the Lacedemonians alone 
accepting, all others rejected. Nevertheless, your emissaries 
did not desist from their intrigues for corrupting and alienat- 
ing my friends and allies, and disturbing the peace of Greece, 
which through my endeavours had been established. On 
these accounts I have made war against you, who have been 
thus the aggressor. Having overcome in battle, first your 
generals and satraps, and then yourself, and having thus, 
through the favour of the gods, possessed myself of the coun- 
try, all your former subjects and adherents, even those who had 
borne arms against me, coming to me for protection, have been 
received kindly ; and they have served me in arms, not by com- 
pulsion but by good will. I, therefore, as now lord of all Asia, 
invite you to come to me. If you have any apprehension for 
your safety, send a confidential person to receive my pledged 
faith. When with me, ask for your wife and family, and 
whatever else you may desire, and you shall have all: ask 
freely; nothing shall be refused. But whenever hereafter you 
would communicate with me, I must be addressed as king of 
Asia, lord of all you possess, and of all you can desire ; other- 
wise I shall reckon myself afTrontingly treated. If you pro- 
pose yet to dispute the sovereignty with me, be it so, and expect 
me : I shall seek you wherever you may be to be found." 

On this letter Mitford makes the following comment : — " It 
must here deserve consideration that we want the reply of 
the Persian court to the charge of its having been implicated 
in the assassination of Philip." ~ 

2 Mitford's History of Greece, vol. ix. chap. 48. 



1 14 EARLY LETTER-WRITING 



CHAPTER X. 

EARLY LETTER-WRITING AMONG THE ROMANS. 

Those miscellaneous productions assuming to be the letters 
of eminent men of ancient times, exhibited in the collections 
of Leo Allatius, Aldus, Cujacius, and others who have dealt 
in these spurious wares, are, as before observed, deserving of 
little credit. They are usually written in indifferent Greek, 
and contain a very rare sprinkling of sound knowledge or 
instructive communication. The misfortune is, that these 
epistles have been heaped together without discrimination ; 
and if there are some among them which might have a better 
title than others to be attended to, the circumstances distin- 
guishing them have been disregarded by those collectors. 
The precepts intended to guide us in the art of letter-writing, 
which are found among those collections, are in general very 
insipid and useless. 

Little or nothing in the shape of letter-writing as existing 
among the Romans in the days of the commonwealth, before 
the age of Cicero, has come down to us. The military habits 
of that people, their absorbing ambition, their restless political 
agitations, and their addiction to brutal entertainments, left 
them little leisure or taste for the cultivation and improvement 
of epistolary intercourse. Those republicans were charac- 
terised by a dryness of genius, and certain coarse and home- 
spun habits of thinking, which ill qualified them for the 
graceful playof thought and expression which properly belongs 
to good letter-writing. Nor do letters of business and grave 
affairs appear but very rarely among the transactions recorded 
by the historians of the Roman republic. The mind of the 
nation took a sudden spring under the influence of Cicero's 
genius, who at once gave and completed the pattern. 



AMONG THE ROMANS. 115 

In the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and other Greek 
historians, letters of statesmen, sages, princes, governors, and 
military commanders, are frequent; but such histories as 
remain to us of the affairs of Rome in its republican form 
exhibit few examples of intercourse by letters. Plutarch, in 
his Life of Pyrrhus, gives us the letter of Fabricius to the 
king, communicating to him the treacherous proposal of his 
physician, Nicias, to take off his master by poison ; but Livy 
contents himself with setting forth the particulars. The letter 
runs thus : — 

" Fabricius and Q. iEmilius to King Pyrrhus, health. 

" You seem to be unhappy in your choice both of your 
friends and your enemies. When you have read the letter 
sent us by one of your own people, you will perceive that 
you are making war with good and honest men, while you 
are trusting to the dishonest and wicked. We make you 
acquainted with these things, not out of regard to you, but 
lest your destruction should bring a slander upon us, and we 
should appear to have accomplished this war by treachery, 
for want of ability to conclude it by valour." 

Upon the receipt of this letter, Pyrrhus is said to have 
exclaimed, " This is a man whom it is harder to turn aside 
from the ways of justice and honour than to divert the sun 
from its course." 

Among the fragments of Nepos there is one the genuine- 
ness of which may be and has been doubted, and yet it is not 
unaccredited, and possesses such internal marks as will not 
allow it to be hastily rejected. It is a letter of Cornelia, the 
mother of the Gracchi, to Caius her son. In a note subjoined 
by Andreas Schottus he writes thus : — " Now I will add a 
fragment of Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, (to whom, 
according to Cicero and Fabius, they attributed the eloquence 
for which they were celebrated) which, whether it be genuine 
or the fabrication of some declaimer, is a point which I do 
not now enter upon. Suffice it to say, it was found in an old 
book of the Abbey of Fesulae, and being politely offered to 
me by Antonius Augustinus, archbishop of Tarragona, after 



116 EARLY LETTER-WRITING 

the same had been copied by James Bengarsius from a British 
MS. I thought it should be added to the Cornelian papers." 

But though Schottus appears to have doubted concerning 
the genuineness of this fragment, other learned persons have 
thought that the letter possesses a character of genuineness, 
and that it has the flavour of antiquity (ap^at^a). 

" I can upon my oath say that, except the men who killed 
Tiberius Gracchus, no enemy of mine has occasioned me so 
much trouble and so much sorrow as you, by the conduct 
you have been pursuing. You ought to have supplied the 
place of the children I have lost ; and to have made it your 
concern that I should have as little anxiety as possible in the 
time of my old age. Your desire should have been that what 
you took in hand should be such as was calculated to give 
me pleasure ; and you should have considered it a crime to 
do any thing of moment which was opposed to my opinion, 
when the short remnant of my life is properly regarded. But 
the fewness of my days has been of no avail for me, nor has 
deterred you from opposing me, and bringing ruin upon the 
state. What rest are we to look for ? When will bounds be 
set to these proceedings? When shall we cease to be in 
troubles, whether present or absent? And when will it be 
disgraceful to throw the republic into confusion and disturb- 
ance ? But if these things must be, at least seek not to be 
tribune till I am no more. When I am gone do what you 
please ; when I shall know it not. When I am dead you 
will perform my funeral rites with the customary honours; 
you will invoke your parent as a deity. Then you will not 
be ashamed to worship the manes of those whom, when alive, 
you neither respected nor heeded. O may you be stopped in 
your mad career! if not, such sorrow will be the result of 
your criminal folly, that throughout your days you will never 
know peace." 1 

1 The letter imports to have been written after the violent death of Tiberius 
Gracchus : " A man," says Paterculus, " of the finest parts, the greatest 
innocence of life, and the purest intentions :" and of whom Cicero confesses 
that " he came nothing short of the virtue of his grandfather, Africanus, 



AMONG THE ROMANS, 117 

The following letter, said to have been addressed to Mith- 
ridates from Sylla, while dictator, and written from the camp, 
breathes the true spirit of republican haughtiness : — 

" I mind not, Mithridates, that the war is at a great dis- 
tance from Rome, fortune having always waited upon her 
at whatever distance she may be. But since you say she 
has never failed you, but has never concerned herself with 
me, you may soon find that, according to her customary 
fickleness, she will leave you for me. Yet, if she should not, 
I care not for her or you, always hoping that the gods will be 
more favourable to my justice than fortune to your arro- 
gance." 

The letter of Catiline to Catulus, as given us by Sallust, 
was well suited to the character of that violent man, covering 
his desperate designs with the pretext of justifiable resistance 
and self-defence : — 

" L. Catilina to Q. Catulo, S. Your remarkable fidelity, 
approved by acts, has given me boldness in these great perils 
to commend myself to you ; wherefore I have determined not 
to resort to any other counsel for my defence. I resolved, 
but not from a consciousness of any criminality in my con- 
duct, to propose a satisfaction, the sincerity of which I swear 
by Hercules you may ascertain if you will. Goaded by 
injuries and contumelies, being deprived of the fruits of my 
labour and industry, and not obtaining my proper station in 

except that he forsook the party of the senate." Cornelia, the wife of 
Sempronius Gracchus, was left a widow with twelve children, all of whom, 
except one daughter, Sempronia, married to Scipio Africanus, and two sons, 
Tiberius and Caius, she lost at an early season. Tiberius and Caius were 
educated by her with the greatest care; and to the advantages of their maternal 
education, though their natural parts were doubtless very good, were chiefly 
owing the eminence to which they attained. She had retired to Missenum 
after the death of Tiberius ; and thither, it is said, the body of Caius, after 
his tragical death, was brought to her. She is said to have passed the 
remainder of her days in a country-house at this place. 

That Cornelia was a writer of letters we know from Cicero, who, in his 
dialogue De Claris Oratoribus, entitled Brutus, thus mentions the fact : — 
" Legimus epistolas Corneliae matris Gracchorum. Apparet filios non tam 
in gremio educatos, quam in Sermone matris." Brut. Iviii. 



118 EARLY LETTER- WRITING 

the commonwealth, I undertook the cause of the miserable, 
as has been ever my practice. I was able to pay my debts, 
contracted on my own account, from my own property ; while 
those contracted on the account of others the liberality of 
Orestilla could pay out of her own means and those of her 
daughters : it was not, therefore, the desperation of my cir- 
cumstances that has forced me to act as I do, but because I saw 
that unworthy men were preferred to posts of honour, and 
that I was excluded under a false charge. On this account 
I betook myself to ways sufficiently honourable in my cir- 
cumstances for preserving the remains of my dignity. 

" I was about to write more at large, but that I was informed 
that violence was to be used against me. 

" I now commend Orestilla, and deliver her to your faithful 
care ; entreating you, by the love you bear to your own chil- 
dren, to defend her from all injurious treatment." 



With the pen of Cicero letter-writing began to take its 
rank in polite literature as a specific head or department of 
composition. 

As the illustrations and rules of poetic composition were 
borrowed by Aristotle from the example of Homer, who has 
left to the world the earliest and best specimen of the epic 
model ; so the practice and authority of Cicero appear to 
have furnished rules best entitled to determine the character 
and merits of the epistolary style. According to that high 
authority in every department of literature, it was a species of 
writing enjoying the privilege of great ease and familiarity, as 
well in its diction as in its treatment of its subject, and to 
considerable liberty in the employment of wit and humour. 
He admits that the composition of a letter may be allowed to 
vary with the subject matter, yet the general style most 
suitable to its character and spirit he considers to be that 
which is most in use in the ordinary and daily intercourse of 
society. Thus, in one of his letters to Pcetus, he expresses 
his admiration of his simple and playful use of words, and 



AMONG THE ROMANS. 119 

especially his indigenous humour, such as characterised the 
old Romans, — preferable in his esteem to that which had the 
title of Attic. He even asks his friend whether he himself 
does not seem, in the letters he writes to him, to adopt a 
common and almost plebeian manner of writing, which he con- 
fesses to be rather his aim, being accustomed to affect only 
words of every-day stamp in his correspondence. There is 
reason to think, however, that Cicero usually took pains 
with the style of his letters, and that it was not his frequent 
practice to write in haste, though on some occasions he must 
have done so ; as where he wrote reclining at an entertain- 
ment, which was the case when he dispatched a letter to the 
same Pcetus, describing on his tablet the persons present, 
and the topics of their conversation. It cannot be doubted, 
however, that he wrote some with a view to their publication. 
In a letter to Atticus he says, " There is no collection (awa- 
ywyri) of my letters, but Tiro has about seventy, and some 
you can furnish. These I must look over and correct, and 
they may finally be given to the public." 2 

In Cicero's view of letter-writing, its style and manner 
ought to vary with the complexion of its subject matter, and 
can be subjected to no abstract system of rules. In a letter 
to Curio he propounds three principal kinds, or genera, of 
epistles, giving the first place to that which simply conveys 
interesting intelligence ; being, as he says, the very object for 
which the thing itself came into existence ; the second place 
to the jocose ; and the third to the serious and solemn. But, 
whether used as the vehicle of playful thoughts or of matters 
of serious import, it was the opinion of Cicero that there was 
something sacred in its contents, which gave it the strongest 
claim to be withheld from third persons where it was of a 
private nature, and chiefly because in such communications 
we give the freest scope to our feelings and fancies ; for 
" who," says this great man in his second philippic, " that is 
at all influenced by good habits and feelings, has ever allowed 

2 And see Ep. to Tiro,, 1. xvi. ep. 17, 



120 EARLY LETTER- WRITING 

himself to resent an affront or injury by exposing to others 
any letters received from the offending person during their 
intercourse of friendship? What else," continued the orator, 
with the same warmth of expression, " would be the tendency 
of such a conduct but to rob the very life of life of its social 
charms ? How many pleasantries find their way into letters, 
as amusing to the correspondents as they are insipid to others ; 
and how many subjects of serious interest which are entirely 
unfit to be brought before the public." 

The letters of his son are the theme of his high commenda- 
tion, as being <j)i\o^opywg et svttivwq scripts, that is, that 
they spoke the language of affection with a severe simplicity, 
after the ancient manner, and on that very account were well 
worthy of being read aloud before a company of friends. 3 
Sometimes he approves of a letter as being written 7rpay- 
liaTiK.b)Q, in a business-like style; and again, he represents 
himself as writing during his meals, using the first pen that 
came to hand. 

Sometimes the sort of letter he desires to receive from his 
friend is epistola ponderosa, charged with all his matters, 
opinions, and doings, as being the colloquies amicorum absen- 
tium : and once or twice he founds an inference of his son's 
progress in learning upon the more accurate composition 
of his letters. Upon the whole, he seems to have thought 
that, whether the subject be solemn or familiar, learned or 
colloquial, general or particular, political or domestic, an easy, 
vivacious, unaffected diction gives to epistolary writing its 
proper grace and perfection : and, according to him and others 
who have bequeathed to us the best patterns, good letter- 
writing is little else than conversation on paper, carried on 
between parties personally separated ; with this advantage, 
that it brings the minds of the conversers into reciprocal 
action with more room for reflection, and with fewer disturb- 
ances than can usually consist with personal conversation. 

About the time of Cicero it was much the fashion among 

3 Ep. to Alt. lxv. ep. 17. 



AMONG THE ROMANS. 121 

men of accomplishment to correspond in Greek. Cicero both 
spoke and wrote in Greek, and was reprimanded for address- 
ing the council of Syracuse in a Greek oration ; and Lucullus 
wrote much in this favourite language. In Rome, indeed, it 
became at last so to prevail, that it grew to be the principal 
language of polite literature. 4 Thus Cicero pro Archia, 
" Grseca leguntur in omnibus fere gentibus ; latina suis fini- 
bus, exiguis sane, continentur." Cicero wrote a Greek letter 
to Caesar. Marcus Brutus is said to have corresponded much 
in the Greek language, and to have affected in his Greek 
letters a very laconic style. There are some instances given 
of this character of his compositions in Plutarch's life of him. 
In the beginning of the war conducted by him after Julius 
Caesar's death, he writes thus to the Pergamenians : — " I hear 
you have given money to Dolabella. If you give it willingly, 
you must own you have injured me ; if unwillingly, shew it 
by giving willingly to me." On another occasion he writes 
to the Samians in the following terms : — " Your deliberations 
are tedious, your actions slow ; what think you will be the 
result ?" Of the Patereans and Xantheans he thus expresses 
himself: — " The Xantheans rejected my kindness, and des- 
perately made their country their grave. The Patereans 
confided in me, and retained their liberty. It is in your own 
choice to imitate the prudence of the Patereans, or to suffer 
the fate of the Xantheans." 

The collection of Greek epistles which pass under his 
name are probably none of them genuine, but fabricated upon 
the hint given by Plutarch. They are introduced in the 
publication of Cujacius as having been collected by Mithri- 
dates, a cousin of the great monarch of that name, who pre- 

4 Q. Fabius and L. Cincius, early Roman historians, often cited by Dio- 
nysius, wrote in Greek (Dionys. Hal. Antiq. Rom. 1. i. p. 5) ; and Hannibal 
himself is said to have written in that language (Corn. Nep. in Vit. c. 13). 
Lucian has, therefore, been properly censured for representing Hannibal as 
learning Greek for the first time, in the shades below. Josephus and Philo 
preferred Greek to their own language; and this preference of the Greek 
language prevailed while the Romans were in the height of their power. See 
Sueton. de illustr. Gramm. 



122 EARLY LETTER-WRITING AMONG THE ROMANS. 

sents them to his royal relative as specimens of the terse and 
elegant style of the Roman commander, and to which he has 
framed such answers as might be supposed to have been 
made to them in the same brief and sententious form. But 
the Greek epistles ascribed to Brutus himself are given as 
genuine, and probably were by many so accounted, for we 
find Philostratus considering Brutus as the best letter-writer 
among military commanders, though it is to be remembered 
that Philostratus was himself a dealer in these spurious 
articles. 



123 



CHAPTER XL 

LETTERS TO CICERO FROM HIS FRIENDS. 

Many of the letters to Cicero from his correspondents are 
very lively specimens of talent in this branch of composition. 
They seem to have been reflections of that radiance which 
his own peculiar genius threw around him. He flourished 
in the most remarkable era in the civil history of man. The 
Roman name and power had filled the world. Whatever in 
human affairs has the strongest tendency to exalt the imagi- 
nation and the passions, and to give the fullest exercise to the 
mental faculties, was then in operation on the largest scale. 
All that philosophy, or war, or ambition, could do in mould- 
ing and diversifying character was in full activity. In the 
absence of balanced, defined, and legitimate authority over 
the vast expanse of territory conquered by infuriate force, 
and kept in awe by a tumultuous dominion, terrific room was 
given for the development of individual energy, and the aims 
of personal aggrandizement. 

There never was a period in which so many great actors 
were upon the stage at once, performing their independent 
parts in the struggle for power, and the work of general dis- 
turbance. The precepts and dogmas of heathen ethics, bred 
and fostered in the nurseries and schools of fable and philo- 
sophy, had reached their maturity and natural consummation: 
but the proper idea of civil society was never realized under 
any circumstances of human condition, before the revelation 
of the Gospel of God laid the solid foundation of reciprocal 
duty and commutative justice. 

The familiar intercourse of letters among the most distin- 
guished men of a period such as is here alluded to, must 



124 LETTERS TO CICERO 

needs be in the highest degree interesting and instructive ; 
and it is on this ground, that the letters of Cicero and his cor- 
respondents compose a document the most important perhaps 
of any which has been saved to us among the remains of 
heathen antiquity. There is not, indeed, any collection of 
the familiar correspondence of modern times in which so 
numerous a train of great and leading characters engaged in 
transactions affecting the whole moral world in its conse- 
quences pass in review before us. 

The age of Cicero was in many respects peculiarly interest- 
ing. It was a great preparatory epoch, in which the Roman 
world in its vast imperial compass lay stretched out to receive 
and diffuse the message of grace and peace that was coming 
in the fulness of time. It is not a little interesting to mix, as 
it were, familiarly in sentiment and mental intercourse with 
the most celebrated men of an age in which all that could 
have been done was done, without Divine illumination, to 
unfold the properties and mature the efforts of the human 
understanding ; — when the wisdom of this world, with all the 
gifts and endowments which the schools of man's teaching 
could confer, stood on the verge of that, new and glorious sys- 
tem with which it was soon to be brought into comparison. 

Interesting, however, as was the aggregate of the cor- 
respondence which was formed about Cicero as a centre, it 
may be generally remarked that, with some exceptions, the 
letters of the contemporaries of Cicero are inferior to Cicero's 
own. The times were tempestuous, and Rome was hastening 
to its catastrophe. All was stir and business, and factious 
intriguing. It was in the power only of such a man as 
Cicero to retreat from the external tumult within his own in- 
tellectual world, and to comment at large on the scenes and 
transactions in which his own destiny was so immediately 
involved; and without the frequent interspersi on of such matters 
as engage our common sympathies, and touch the springs of our 
common feeling, no letters, however important as illustrative 
of history or character, can be generally pleasing or attractive. 
It is only a large way of dealing with a present subject that 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 125 

makes those who come after parties to the correspondence, 
however remote in time or place. 

Some of the letters of Cicero's friends deserve a particular 
notice. That of Cato especially is a valuable relic, as it is 
the only piece of writing which has come down to us from the 
pen of that remarkable Roman. The occasion of it was as 
follows : — Cicero, during his government of the province of 
Cilicia, having learned that C. Cassius was blocked up by 
the Parthians at Antioch, who had even advanced into Cilicia, 
proceeded with his army to the passes of Amanus, by a rapid 
march from Cappadocia over the mountains of Taurus, and 
by this decisive movement induced the enemy to retire from 
Antioch ; thereby giving to Cassius the opportunity of harass- 
ing them greatly on their retreat. At Amanus, Cicero suc- 
ceeded in defeating and dispersing a race of freebooters 
inhabiting those mountains, who, confiding in the strength of 
their position, had long bid defiance to the Roman arms. After 
which success, his troops were lodged in the same station 
which Alexander had used after his great victory over Darius 
at the battle of Issus ; a circumstance regarded with no little 
complacency by Cicero. From Amanus he led his army 
against a people maintaining their independence in the fast- 
nesses of another part of the same high lands, whose chief 
town was called Pindenissum, which place, after a six weeks' 
investment, he compelled to surrender to the Roman arms. 
For these successes Cicero had been saluted emperor, as was 
usual on such occasions, and only wanted the ceremony of a 
public thanksgiving to satisfy his vanity, which is said to 
have inflated him with the hopes of a triumph. The personal 
weight and authority of Cato was then very high, and it was 
the earnest desire of Cicero to engage his vote in support at 
least of a decree of the senate for a supplication as it was 
called. Cato nevertheless voted against it, being of opinion, 
that the honour of a supplication had been too cheaply 
bestowed ; but he spoke on this occasion in high commenda- 
tion of Cicero's conduct, both civil and military, and when 
the senate had decided agreeably to Cicero's wishes, assisted 



126 LETTERS TO CICERO 

in drawing up the decree, and had his own name inserted in 
it, as was usually done, when a particular expression of per- 
sonal respect and friendship was intended. 1 When the busi- 
ness in the senate was concluded, Cato wrote the following 
letter : 

M. CATO TO M. J. CICERO EMP. 

That which both the republic and our friendship require of 
me, I rejoice to comply with, in bearing testimony to your 
virtue, integrity, and diligence, approved in .the greatest 
affairs, and exerted every where with equal perseverance as a 
senator at home and as a commander abroad. I did all, 
therefore, that I could, with the consent of my judgment and 
conviction, both in giving my vote and in the wording of 
the decree, by ascribing to your fidelity and good conduct 
the defence of your province, the safety of the kingdom and 
person of Ariobarzanes, and the bringing back the allies to 
their duty and attachment to the Roman state. If it is your 
wish that where chance has had no part, but all has been 
owing to your very great prudence and moderation, we should 
hold ourselves rather indebted to the gods than to yourself, 
I am glad that a supplication has been decreed. But if you 
think that a supplication is a preparation for a triumph, and for 
that reason choose that fortune should have the credit of what 
has been done by you, I must observe, that a triumph does 
not always follow a supplication ; and that it is much more 
for the honour of a general that the senate should decree 
that a province has been preserved to the empire by the mild- 
ness and equity of his administration, than by the force of 
arms and the favour of the gods. This was my object in 
voting as I did ; and I have now used more words than I am 
accustomed to do, that you may be persuaded of what it is 
my earnest wish to prove to you, that though I had a desire 
to do what I took to be most for your dignity and honour, 
yet I am glad to see that done which is most agreeable to 

1 Ep. Fam. xv, 6. 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 127 

your wishes. Farewell, and continue your affection to me. 
Persevere in the course which you have hitherto pursued, 
with respect both to the allies and to the republic. 



The above letter is by no means a specimen of Cato's im- 
puted roughness and rusticity, nor does it seem to merit the 
degree of displeasure which it evidently caused in the mind 
of Cicero. 2 

It was in the 704th year from the building of Rome, and 
48th b. c. in the consulship of C. Claudius Marcellus, and 
L. Corn. Lentulus Crus, that the senate, on the motion of 
Scipio, voted a decree that Caesar should dismiss his army by 
a certain day, or be declared an enemy. The decree was 
ineffectual. Caesar passed the Rubicon, the boundary of his 
province, and, marching into Italy, made an immediate con- 
quest of all the considerable towns which came first in his 
way. Rome was panic-struck. Its defenders fled, and 
Pompey retreated at the approach of Caesar, leaving his 
party in the greatest consternation. Caesar proposed terms, 
part of the conditions of which was that Pompey should 
go to his government of Spain, and dismiss his new levies. 
These proposals were discussed in a council at Capua, at 
which Cicero was present: but pending the treaty the con- 
queror pressed on with vigour, and shewed plainly that he 
had no real thoughts of peace. All the towns of the empire 
were armed against him, and though he had the most powerful 
single army in the world, yet Pompey was master of the sea, 
with other great advantages. Domitius, with a considerable 
force, accompanied by some of the principal senators, made a 
stand at Corfinium, where they were besieged by Caesar, and 
being compelled to surrender, became the first subjects of 
his clemency and moderation after his hostile entrance into 
Italy ; while Pompey was acknowledging by his flight his 
superiority in the field. Among the consular Romans whom 

2 " Aveo scire, Cato quid agat: qui quidem in me turpiter fuit malevolus," 
&c. Ad. Att. vii. 2. 



128 LETTERS TO CICERO 

Csesar had dismissed at Corfinium was Lentulus Spinther, 
a particular friend of Cicero, and a principal promoter, 
when consul, of his restoration from banishment; and for 
this generous treatment of his friend, Cicero had written a 
letter of thanks to Csesar, to which Csesar returned the follow- 
ing answer : 

CiESAR IMP. TO CICERO. IMP. 

You judge rightly of me (for you know me well), that nothing 
is further from me than cruelty : and as the thing itself which 
I have done gives me pleasure in the reflection upon it, so is 
it to me matter of triumph and joy that it is approved of by 
you. Nor does it at all move me, that those who were dis- 
missed by me, are said to have departed to renew the war 
against me : for I desire nothing more than that I may always 
be like myself, and they like themselves. My wish is that you 
may give me your presence in the city, that I may use your 
counsel and assistance in all things, as heretofore I have been 
used to do. I assure you nothing is dearer to me than Dola- 
bella ; I will therefore owe this favour to him. He could not, 
indeed, have acted otherwise than he has done ; such is his 
humanity, his intelligence, and his benevolence towards me. 



Pompey, after the defeat at Corfinium, retired to Brundisium, 
and declared his design of quitting Italy, and carrying the 
war abroad. Here he wrote letters to Cicero at Formiae, 
pressing him to join him immediately. But Cicero was by 
no means satisfied with his conduct, and was moreover much 
displeased with his short and careless manner of writing on 
a matter so important. Pompey's letter was in the terms 
following : — 

N. POMPEIUS MAGNUS, PROCONSUL, TO M. CICERO IMP. 

If you are in health, it is well. I read your letter with plea- 
sure : for I recognised in it your wonted virtue in your regard 
to the public safety. The consuls are come to the army which 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 129 

I had in Apulia. I earnestly exhort you, by your singular 
and constant zeal for the republic, also to come to us, that by 
our united counsel we may bring help and relief to the 
afflicted commonwealth. I think you had best come by the 
Appian road, and make for Brundisium, 



Cicero did not approve of the conduct and measures of 
Pompey in this trying state of public affairs ; and in his 
answer to Pompey's letters, he intimates pretty plainly his 
opinion, that he had done wrongly in betaking himself to 
Brundisium, instead of hastening to the relief of Corfinium. 
His disgust at the desertion of Italy by the general on 
whom Rome had placed its ultimate confidence, was perhaps 
one of his reasons for his not proceeding immediately to join 
Pompey at Brundisium; but it was evident that he looked to 
the possibility of a temporary adjustment, at least, between 
the hostile parties, and was unwilling, with such a possibility 
before him, to make Caesar his decided enemy. While things 
were in this attitude with respect to Cicero, Caesar appeared 
to be making efforts, with the intervention of common friends, 
to conciliate him, or at least to induce him to stand neuter ; 
and seeing him remaining still apart from Pompey, he appears 
to have entertained the hope of persuading him to return to 
Rome, and assist in the councils of the senate. With this 
view, Caesar, while following Pompey to Brundisium, sent 
the following letter to Cicero, then at one of his villas near 
the sea : 

C^SAR IMP. TO CICERO IMP. 

Though I could but just see our friend Furnius; and could 
neither speak, nor listen, with convenience ; but was hastening 
on my march, having sent my legions before me ; I could not 
but write to you, and send him with my thanks. Notwith- 
standing I have done this often before, and am likely oftener 
still to do the same again, (so well do you deserve of me,) yet 

K 



130 LETTERS TO CICERO 

I make it my special request, as I trust speedily to return to 
the city, that I may see you there ; and that by your counsel, 
kindness, and the weight of your character, I may be assisted 
in all my affairs. I will write again on this point. You will 
pardon the haste and brevity of my letter. You will know 
the rest from Furnius. 



The letter of Caesar, above produced, was agreeable to the 
tone and character of all his communications ; short, rapid, 
and decisive ; but full to the purpose. It was the letter of 
one bent on the accomplishment of a single project, on which 
the fate of an empire was suspended ; of one hastening to his 
purpose, to which whatever interposed itself was to be made 
subordinate, or was to be pushed aside. The world itself was 
the prize before him, and nothing in the world could stop his 
way. He had neither eyes nor ears for anything that did not 
make for his object. He wanted no counsel but his own, and 
when Cicero was asked for Ms, nothing was intended but his 
co-operation or his neutrality. Like a vessel ploughing the 
ocean with all its canvass set, he took the wind and storm 
into his service, and looked at difficulty and danger as minis- 
tering to his fortune ; while Cicero, shaken by doubt and dis- 
trust, amidst shifting winds and opposing currents, was wait- 
ing to be decided by the issue of events beyond his calcula- 
tion, and above his control. All the ulterior purposes of 
Caesar were comprehended in the resolution which dictated 
the passage of the fatal boundary. Cicero was, indeed, too 
perspicacious not to see that Caesar's courtesy towards him 
was only one among the means of carrying forward his 
gigantic aims. This appears from one of his letters to 
Atticus, wherein, speaking of a visit made to him by the 
younger Balbus, in his way with a message from Caesar to 
Lentulus, the consul, he says : " He (Balbus) told me, that 
Caesar desired nothing so much as to overtake Pompey, which 
I believe ; and to be friends with him again, which I do not 
believe. I begin to fear that all this clemency means nothing 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 131 

else than at last to give the one cruel blow. The elder 
Balbus writes me word that Caesar wishes nothing more than 
to live in safety, and yield the first rank to Pompey. You 
take him, I suppose, to be in earnest ? '•■ 



The answer of Cicero to the letter of Caesar above produced, 
was such as might be expected from the state of mind above 
imputed to him. In his anxiety to stand well both with 
Caesar and Pompey, he talks in the following memorable 
letter of a reconciliation between them, which he must have 
known to be impossible, He thus writes: 



CICERO IMP. TO CjESAR IMP/ 

Upon reading your letter delivered to me by Furnius, in 
which you pressed me to go to the city, I did not so much 
wonder at what you there intimated of your desire to use my 
advice and authority, but was at a loss to find out what you 
meant by my interest and assistance ; yet I flattered myself 
into a persuasion that your great sagacity and prudence had 
made you desirous of entering into some measures for estab- 
lishing the peace and concord of the city. And in that case 
I considered that my temper and character did really qualify 
me to be employed in such a mediation. If this be so, and 
you have any concern for the safety of our friend Pompey, 
any care to reconcile him to yourself and to the republic, 
you will assuredly find no man more proper for such a work 
than I am, who from the very first have always been the 
adviser of peace both to him and to the senate, and since 
recourse has been had to arms have not interfered in the war; 
which I have always thought to be injurious to your best 
interests, while your enemies and enviers were attempting to 
deprive you of those honours which the Roman people had 
granted you . B ut as at that time I not only myself pro- 

2 The letter properly belongs to the ensuing chapter, but for the sake of 
elucidation is inserted in this place. 



132 LETTERS TO CICERO 

moted your dignity, but encouraged others to do the same, 
so now the honour of Pompey greatly interests me. For 
many years ago, I made choice of you two as persons with 
whom it was desirable to cultivate a particular friendship. So 
then, I desire of you, or rather I beg and beseech you, with 
all entreaties, that in the midst of your hurry and anxiety, 
you will consider for a moment in what manner I may be 
permitted to prove myself an upright, grateful, and devoted 
man, in remembering a benefit of the hiohest kind conferred 
on me. If this request had reference only to myself, I should 
hope, nevertheless, to obtain it from you; but it concerns, I 
think, both your honour and the republic, that by your means 
I should be allowed to continue where I may best promote 
harmony between yourself and Pompey, as well as the general 
concord of all the citizens. 

After I had sent my thanks to you before, on the account 
of Lentulus (Lentulus Spinther) for giving safety to him, 
who had given it to me, yet upon reading his letter, in which 
he expresses the most grateful sense of your liberality, I con- 
sidered myself as much indebted to your bounty as Lentulus 
himself. And if you perceive me to be thus grateful, I entreat 
you to put it in my power to be grateful also to Pompey. 



For this letter Cicero has been much blamed, and it cannot 
be denied that there is not much in it of the sternness of 
Roman virtue. Inferior as was the cause of Csesar in motive 
and principle, it placed his character at an elevation greatly 
above that of Cicero, in the qualities which satisfy the world's 
conception of greatness. 

While Cicero, at one of his marine villas, seemed to be 
waiting only for a wind to carry him over to Pompey, Csesar 
sent him a kind letter or two from Home, to compose his 
apprehensions, and induce him, if possible, to remain quiet. 
The following letter makes an insidious attempt to draw him 
off from the party of Pompey, by his regard to his own ease 
and personal safety : 



FROM 1J1S FRIENDS. 133 



CiESAR. IMP. TO CICERO IMP. 



Although I was sure you would do nothing rashly or impru- 
dently, yet, moved by common report, I judged it proper to 
write to you, and to beg of you, by our mutual affection, that 
you would not betake yourself now to a declining cause, 
which you did not think fit to adopt while it stood unim- 
paired. But you will do the greatest injury to our friendship, 
and consult but ill for yourself, if you do not follow where 
fortune leads (for all things have turned out most prosper- 
ously for us and most adversely for them), nor will your view 
of the cause itself appear to have been consistently followed 
up, since that remains as it was when you judged it right to 
withdraw yourself from their counsels; but it will seem that 
you have fallen out with something which I have clone, than 
which nothing done on your part towards myself could affect 
me more seriously, and which, by the rights of our friendship, 
I beg I may not experience at your hands. In fine, let me 
ask you what is more suitable to the character of a virtuous 
and quiet man, and a good citizen, than to live apart from 
civil broils ? which are avoided by some more from the mere 
apprehension of danger than from any dislike of contention ; 
but you, having such full opportunity of understanding my 
intentions from the testimony of my whole life, and having 
made such trial of my friendship, will be satisfied upon these 
assurances that nothing can be more safe and honourable for 
you than to stand aloof from all contention. The 16th April, 
on the road. 



Caesar's friends made many similar efforts to deter Cicero 
from leaving Italy, and actively joining the party of Pompey, 
by placing before him the comfort and enjoyment attendant 
upon a seclusion from all intermixture with the troubles of 
the state, in which he might quietly pursue his refined and 
intellectual occupations. But to the credit of Cicero, it must 



134 LETTERS TO CICERO 

be admitted that his sense of duty to his country would not 
allow him to adopt such a selfish line of conduct. Ccelius's 
letter to him is distinguished among the many sent to him 
with the same object for its address and importunity. 



CCEL1US TO CICERO. 

Thrown into the greatest consternation by your letter, by 
which you shew that you are meditating nothing but what is 
dismal, while you neither clearly state to me what the thing 
is, nor the nature of it, I have forthwith written this letter 
to you. By all your fortunes, Cicero, by your children, I 
pray and beseech you not to take any step injurious to your 
safety ; for I call the gods, and men, and our friendship to 
witness, that what I have predicted and forewarned you of 
was not a hasty and rash suggestion of my fears, but the 
effect of information derived from an interview with Caesar, 
in which I learned fully from him what he had determined to 
do after his victory. If you think that Caesar will always 
adopt the same method of dealing with his enemies (as at 
Confinium), upon conditions, you are in a mistake. He 
meditates nothing but what is fierce and severe, and is gone 
away much out of humour with the senate ; evidently pro- 
voked by the opposition he has met with : and, depend upon 
it, his anger will be unappeasable. Wherefore if your own 
person, your only son, your house, your remaining hopes, be 
dear to you ; if I, and that excellent man your son-in-law, 
have any weight with you, you cannot persuade yourself to 
ruin the fortune of these persons by compelling them either 
to act as enemies towards a cause in which their own safety is 
involved, or to entertain any impious wishes in opposition to 
yours. 

Lastly, reflect on this — that by your delay you have given 
great offence, and now to declare against a conqueror whom 
you were unwilling to offend while his success was doubtful, 
and to go over to those who have been forced to run away, 
and whom you would not join when in an attitude of resist- 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 135 

ance, would be the greatest folly. Take care that if you are 
ashamed not to be one of the best citizens, you are not hasty 
in determining what is the best. But if at present I am 
unable to persuade you, at least wait till it is known what we 
do in Spain ; which, take my word for it, will be ours as soon 
as Caesar comes thither. What hopes they can have when 
Spain is lost I know not ; and what your purpose is in 
acceding to a cause so desperate is truly past my finding out. 
As to that which I discover from your very silence about it, 
Caesar has heard of it, and hardly had he got out the usual 
words of salutation on our meeting, when he told me what he 
had heard of you. I denied all knowledge of the matter; 
but at the same time begged him to write to you such a letter 
as might be best calculated to induce you to remain in Italy. 
He takes me with him into Spain. If he did not, I would run 
away to you wherever you might be, before I came to Rome, to 
contend this point with you in person, and retain you by main 
force. Again and again, I say, Cicero, consider this well ; 
that you may not utterly ruin yourself and all that belongs to 
you ; that you may not knowingly and advisedly bring your- 
self into a strait from which you will be unable to deliver 
yourself. But if either the opinions of certain men of note 
keep you in awe, or you are unable to bear the insolence and 
haughtiness of some others, I would recommend you to select 
some place remote from the war till the present struggles are 
decided. If you do this, I shall think you have acted wisely, 
and in so doing you will give no offence to Caesar. 



It has been often remarked as a circumstance that reflected 
great honour upon Cicero, that when the empire of the world 
depended upon a question which was to be decided by the 
sword alone, the leaders on both sides should deem it a matter 
of so much importance to obtain his friendship for the sake 
only of the credit and weight of his judgment and character. 
His delay in repairing to the camp of Pompey, was imputed 
by his enemies to the mean policy of waiting to see which 



136 LETTERS TO CICERO 

party proved the stronger, that his adherence might be decided 
by the event ; yet the far more probable explanation is found 
in the fact that he laboured with great consistency of effort, 
though, as it would seem, in this instance, with a short view 
of the current of events, and a defective insight into character, 
to reconcile the quarrels of men for whose ambition the world 
was not wide enough. Caesar and his friends insisted only on 
Cicero's remaining neutral, and retiring to a distance from 
the contention ; but Pompey and the better cause required 
his active and decided adherence ; and however inconvenient 
for Cicero, and repugnant to his habits and addictions, he 
determined to share the destinies of Rome, and to commit 
himself to an element of storm and danger in the vessel of the 
state. 

The entreaties of his family, and especially of his daughter, 
Tullia, who besought him to wait only for the issue of the 
war which Caesar was just engaging in with the best troops of 
Pompey, could prevail only to detain him a short time at his 
Formian villa. He left Italy, and, sailing for Dyrrachium, 
arrived at the camp of Pompey, to whom, out of his private 
purse, he furnished so large a sum of money as greatly to 
injure his own fortune. Pompey, in the opinion of Cicero, 
committed many blunders in the conduct of that disastrous 
campaign. After the battle of Pharsalia, which took place 
while Cicero was in the camp at Dyrrachium, he returned to 
Italy, about the end of October in the year of the city 706, to 
depend upon the mercy of Caesar while Caesar lived ; and it 
must be owned he had never any reason to complain of the 
treatment he received at the hands of that generous conqueror. 
He was at Brundisium when he heard of the death of Pompey ; 
an event which appeared to have been fully expected by him, 
and on which he thus expressed himself in a letter to Atticus : 
— " Non possum ejus casum non dolere: hominem enim in- 
tegrum, et castum, et gravem cognovi." 3 

3 His body was burned by one of his freedmen, and his ashes, being con- 
veyed to Rome, were deposited by his wife, Cornelia, in a vault of his Alban 
villa. The Egyptians raised a monument to him on the place where he was 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 137 

The first interview between Cicero and Caesar, after the 
return of the latter from the victory at Pharsalia, is described 
by Plutarch in terms greatly to the credit of Caesar's urbanity 
and clemency. On the first notice of Caesar's coming forward 
to Rome, Cicero set out on foot to meet him ; but Csesar no 
sooner saw him than he alighted, ran to embrace him, and 
walked with him alone, conversing very familiarly with him 
for several furlongs. 

Csesar embarked for Africa about the end of the year of the 
city 707; and while the fate of the war in that quarter be- 
tween him and the Pompeian generals, assisted by King 
Juba, held the Roman empire in suspense, Cicero, in learned 
seclusion, was extending his studies and enquiries over various 
provinces of literature and philosophy. In this interim he 
parted with his wife Terentia, and entered into marriage with 
Publilia, a young woman, rich, beautiful, and well allied, of 
which he gives an account, with his reasons, in a letter to 
Plancius, and from whom he soon after separated. 

I have added these few particulars respecting Cicero, to 
lay a better foundation for some of his letters, which seem 
best entitled to be produced as specimens of his style and 
manner in this species of composition. Among the letters of 
his friends to him, none are more worthy of notice than that 
which was written to him by Servius Sulpicius on the death 
of his beloved daughter, Tullia, the wife of Dolabella, at the 
age of thirty-two. She died in childbed, after having been 
divorced from her husband, on account of the incompatibility 
of their sentiments and characters. Caesar wrote to him on 
this sad occasion, as did also Marcus Brutus, of whose letter 
he thus writes in a letter to Atticus : — " Bruti litterae scriptae, 
et prudenter et amice ; multas tamen mihi lacrymas, attule- 
runt." But the letter of Sulpicius has been greatly extolled 
for its feeling and elegance. 

killed, and adorned it with figures of brass, which, being defaced and covered 
with sand, were afterwards restored by the Emperor Hadrian. See the grand 
A7ro3e<i)<ng in Lucan, 1. ix. 



138 LETTERS TO CICERO 



SERV. SULPICIUS TO M. T. CICERO. 

When word was brought me of the death of your daughter 
Tullia, the news affected me exceedingly, as it was natural it 
should do, being an affliction which I looked upon as shared 
between us. Had I been with you at the moment of your 
loss, I should have mixed my sorrow with yours. Although 
this is but a miserable and poor consolation, coming as it 
must from near friends and relations, who being in the same 
affliction with the bereaved person, cannot administer comfort 
without adding their own tears, so that they may seem rather 
to need comfort themselves, than to be capable of giving it to 
others ; nevertheless, I resolved in a few words to write to 
you such thoughts as have come into mind upon this occasion. 
Not that I imagine that what I could suggest had not occurred 
to your own mind, but because I considered that, in the pre- 
sent distressed state of your spirits, your attention might not 
be sufficiently drawn to them. How is it that your grief has 
taken so violent a hold upon you ? Consider how fortune has 
hitherto dealt with us; that those things have been taken 
from us which ought to be as dear to us as our children — our 
country, our eminence, our dignity, and our honours. To 
such a weight of grief, can this one sorrow be felt as an addi- 
tion ? How can a mind exercised in these trials be otherwise 
than callous, and disposed to think all other things of inferior 
moment? 

But is it for what your daughter has been deprived of that 
you feel such sorrow ? Alas, how often must the reflection 
occur to you, for indeed it has to me, that, in times like these, 
those are not the least mercifully dealt with who are permitted 
without much suffering to pass from life to death. For what 
was there in the state in which things were at her death 
which could make life very desirable to your daughter ? What 
present happiness, what hope of the future, what mental 
tranquillity ? Was it desirable to her that she might pass 
her days in marriage with some young man of high quality ; 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 139 

granting that you might have had it in your power to select 
a son-in-law from among the Roman youth suitable to your 
own dignity, to whose fidelity you might deem it safe to 
commit your child ? Or was it your desire that she should 
bear children, whom she might have seen with delight pros- 
pering in the commonwealth, in the enjoyment of their pater- 
nal fortunes ; who might rise in succession to all the honours 
of the state, and use the liberty to which they were born in 
the protection of their friends and clients ? I ask, which of 
these things was not taken away before it was given ? But 
you will say, it is after all a sad thing to lose one's children. 
It is doubtless an evil. Yet it is a greater evil to live and 
endure these things. Let me mention to you a circumstance 
which brought to my mind not a little comfort, and which may, 
perhaps, tend somewhat to soften your grief. On my return 
from Asia, while I was sailing from iEgina towards Megara, I 
began to contemplate the prospect of the countries around 
me. iEgina was behind me, Megara before me, Piraeus on the 
right, on the left, Corinth : which towns were once in a most 
flourishing state, and now lie before our eyes, sad spectacles of 
ruin and desolation ? Alas ! I thought within myself, shall 
we poor perishing mortals grieve and fret if one of us is 
removed from this scene by a natural death, or by the hand of 
violence, when in this narrow space the carcasses of so many 
cities lie stretched in ruin before us? And thus I expostu- 
lated with myself, — Will you not command yourself, Servius, 
and remember that you are born a man? Believe me, I 
found myself not a little strengthened by this meditation. If 
you are pleased with it, call to view the same scene, and 
draw the same reflections from it. Think what numbers of 
illustrious men have lately perished in one short period : how 
much the strength of the empire has been impaired : how all 
the provinces have been convulsed : and because the fleeting 
breath of one little woman hath gone out of her, will you 
suffer yourself to be so overcome by grief? — who, if she had 
not died at this time, must have resigned her breath in a few 
short years by the common lot of her being. 



140 LETTERS TO CICERO 

But call off your thoughts from these subjects to the proper 
consideration of your own character and personal dignity, and 
the duties which are implied in that consideration. Remem- 
ber, your daughter lived as long as life was worth enjoying : 
that she lived as long as the republic lived ; had seen her 
father prsetor, consul, augur; had been married to some of 
the noblest of the Roman youth ; had experienced every good 
of life; and when the republic died, died herself. What 
reason is there then either for you or her to complain of for- 
tune on this account? In fine, do not forget that you are 
Cicero ; one who has always been accustomed to advise and 
give counsel to others ; nor act like those physicians who, 
while they affect to cure the diseases of other men, are unable 
to cure their own, but turn to your own profit the lesson 
which, in the same case, you would give to others. There is 
no sorrow so great as not to be alleviated by length of time; 
but it would be disgraceful in you to wait for that time, and 
not to anticipate it by your own wisdom. Moreover, if there 
be any knowledge in the departed of what passes here, such 
was her affection and piety towards you, that she cannot but 
lament to see you so afflict yourself. Make a sacrifice, there- 
fore, of your grief to your deceased daughter, to your friends, 
to your companions and associates, who are all the unhappy 
witnesses of your sorrow. Sacrifice it to your country, that 
it may yet have the benefit of your assistance and advice. 
Finally, since we are come to that pass, that we have no 
resource but in resignation, take care you do not cause it to be 
suspected that you are all the while not so much bewailing 
the loss of your daughter as the state of the times and the 
victories of certain persons. 

I am ashamed to write any more, lest I should appear to 
want confidence in your good sense. Therefore with this one 
proposition I will bring my letter to an end. We have some- 
times seen you bear your prosperity nobly, with great honour 
and credit to yourself; let us now see that you are able, with 
the same equanimity, to bear adverse fortune, and without 
feeling it harder to be endured than it really is, so that among 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 141 

all your virtues in this one you will be found wanting. As to 
myself, when I shall be certified that your spirits are more 
composed, I will transmit to you full intelligence touching 
the state of this province. 



Servius Sulpicius, the writer of the letter above produced, 
was at the time of his writing it the ablest lawyer in Rome. 
The story told of the incident which gave the first impulse to 
his studies is this : — Having occasion to take the opinion of 
Mucius Scaevola on some legal point, he was so slow in com- 
prehending what was said to him, that Mucius could not 
forbear remonstrating with him on the discredit he brought 
upon himself as a patrician and pleader of causes, by his 
ignorance of legal principles. He was so stung with the 
reproach, that, from that time, he betook himself with such 
eagerness and perseverance to the study of the law, that he 
made himself the best lawyer in Rome, and left behind him 
near one hundred and eighty books written by himself on 
different legal subjects. 

He was, moreover, a most upright and amiable man, and 
well deserved the elegant eulogy pronounced on him by 
Cicero in the senate. He died in the service of the republic, 
being carried off by a fatal sickness while proceeding, much 
against his will, and notwithstanding his bodily infirmity, on 
an embassy from the senate to M. Antony, then besieging 
Modena, with L. Piso and L. Philippus, his two colleagues 
in that commission. At the earnest application of Cicero, the 
senate decreed to him a public funeral, sepulchre, and statue. 
His statue of brass was remaining in the rostra of Augustus 
in the third century a. c. 

None of the correspondents of Cicero stood out in these 
trying times in greater prominence and dignity than Marcus 
Claudius Marcellus. He was an intimate friend of Servius 
Sulpicius, who, when consul with him in the year of Rome 
702, contributed greatly to moderate the fierce spirit of his 
less considerate and prudent colleague. Marcellus was, how- 



142 LETTERS TO CICERO 

ever, a person of eminent worth, and was exceeded by none 
of that age in the characteristics of Roman greatness. But 
a certain haughtiness of temper tarnished the lustre of his 
other qualities. In the effort to sustain the ancient glory of 
his race he was too little observant of the political aspect of 
the times, too stern and unbending in his maxims, to afford 
the state any seasonable aid in its emergencies, while a licen- 
tious, worn out, and shattered democracy was hastening to 
the maturity of its fate in a sanguinary despotism. Sulpicius 
held Marcellus in the greatest esteem, as second only to Cicero 
in the noblest faculties of an orator. He was a most deter- 
mined opposer of Caesar, having moved the senate for several 
decrees against him ; but was pardoned by him at the inter- 
cession of the senate. After the battle of Pharsalia, Marcellus 
had retired to Mitylene in Lesbos, and was there living with 
so much satisfaction to himself in the cultivation of letters 
and philosophy, that he was with difficulty persuaded to come 
to Rome to take the benefit of the dictator's pardon. 

Cicero, in a letter to Sulpicius, thus relates the proceeding 
in the senate: — " Upon the mention of Marcellus by Piso, 
his brother, Caius, having thrown himself at Caesar's feet, all 
rose up and approached Caesar in a supplicating manner. In 
short, this day's business appeared to me in so becoming a 
light, that I could not help fancying I saw the form of the old 
republic recovering its life and beauty. When all, therefore, 
who were asked their opinions before me, had returned thanks 
to Caesar, though I had resolved to maintain an entire silence, 
not from insensibility, but from the sense of my lost dignity, 
my resolution was overcome by Caesar's greatness of mind, 
and I gave thanks to him in a long speech ; by which con- 
duct I fear I may have parted with that honourable ease and 
quiet which was my only solace in these evil days. I have 
hitherto avoided giving him offence, and if I had always con- 
tinued silent, he would have construed it as a proof of my 
taking the republic to be ruined ; but, for the future, I shall 
speak seldom, to secure, at the same time, his good will and a 
quiet time for my own studies " 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 143 

While Marcellus was at Mitylene, resolving to spend the 
remainder of his days in a studious retreat from the distrac- 
tions of the republic, Brutus paid him a visit, and found him 
in the enjoyment of great mental quietude and dignified tran- 
quillity, inwardly sustained by conscious integrity, and exter- 
nally graced by the society of the most eminent scholars and 
philosophers of Greece ; and so pleased was Brutus with all 
the circumstances which he found thus surrounding and 
adorning the character of his accomplished friend, that, in a 
strain of compliment to be remembered for its elegance, he 
took his leave, seeming, as he said, to be going himself into 
exile, rather than to be leaving a banished friend. 

It appears that Cicero wrote to Marcellus, at Mitylene, an 
account of the manner in which Caesar's pardon for him had 
been obtained, accompanying that narrative with an urgent 
request that he would meet the gracious act of Csesar with an 
equal grace in the manner of his acceptance of it. That letter 
of Cicero has not been preserved : but it is clear, from Mar- 
cellus's answer, that it contained the most friendly expres- 
sions of congratulation. The fine letter it drew from Marcel- 
lus in reply (the only one by the same hand which has come 
down to us), treats the fact communicated by Cicero with a 
haughty indifference, acknowledging it as a subject of con- 
gratulation only for the testimony it bore to the friendship of 
Cicero, of the value of which he professes to be in the highest 
degree sensible. 



M. MARCELLUS TO M. CICERO. 

You cannot but see that on every occasion, but particularly 
on the present, the highest value is set by me on your autho- 
rity and advice. When my affectionate brother, Caius Mar- 
cellus, not only advised me, but entreated me, to act as you 
recommend, his persuasions were of no avail, till your opinion 
and advice, by their superior weight, made them effectual. 
Your letter distinctly shews me how this affair was transacted. 
T feel very sensibly the kindness of your congratulations, which 



144 LETTERS TO CICERO 

I know proceed from an excellent spirit. Among the few 
friends and relations who have sincerely endeavoured to pro- 
mote my recall, it affords me the highest satisfaction to acknow- 
ledge the warmth and sincerity of your zeal and benevolence. 
Every thing else the sad state of the times has taught me to 
resign without reluctance ; but to be deprived of the friend- 
ship of such as I esteem you to be, I should consider as 
making life insupportable, either in prosperous or adverse 
fortune. It is on the possession of this advantage that I 
deem myself an object of congratulation ; and I shall endea- 
vour to make it appear to you that you have done these good 
offices to one who is your most attached friend. 



Thus it appears that this accomplished Roman was pur- 
posing to remain in literate ease and seclusion in his retreat at 
Mytelene, had it not been for the urgent and repeated solici- 
tations of Cicero, by letters to him, to return to Rome, that 
his country might have the benefit of his extraordinary zeal 
and ability, and himself the solace of his companionship in 
his private studies. Yielding to the arguments and persua- 
sions of his friend, Marcellus began his journey towards Rome. 
He had proceeded as far as Pirseeus, where he spent a day 
with his old friend and colleague in the consulship, Servius 
Sulpicius, intending to pursue his voyage the next day, but, 
on the night of the 23rd of May, A. Urb. 708, he was killed 
by his friend and client, P. Magius Cilo, who immediately 
afterwards stabbed himself with the same poniard. The letter 
of Sulpicius to Cicero, informing him of this melancholy fact, 
is very affecting. 

SERV. SULPICIUS TO M. T. CICERO. 

Although I know that the news which I am about to tell 
you will be painful to you, yet since you cannot be unpre- 
pared for any of the casualties which happen to all of us by 
nature or accident, I have thought it proper to send you a 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 145 

circumstantial account of what has just taken place. I came 
by sea from Epidaurus to Piraeeus on the 22nd instant, where 
I stayed all that day to enjoy the company of my colleague 
Marcellus. The next day I parted from him, intending to go 
from Athens into Bceotia, in order to finish what remained 
of my jurisdiction. He was preparing, as he said, to sail 
for Italy. On the day following, about four o'clock in 
the morning, when I was about to set out from Athens, 
his friend, P. Posthumius, came to tell me that Marcellus 
had been stabbed by his companion P. Magius Cilo after 
supper, having received two wounds, one in his stomach, 
the other in his head, near the ear, but that he hoped still 
he might recover. That Magius had then killed himself; 
and that Marcellus had sent him to inform me of what 
had happened, and to desire that I would bring some phy- 
sicians to him. I collected some, and proceeded with them 
before break of day ; but when I was come near Pirseeus, a 
servant of Acidinus met me with a note from his master, to 
acquaint me that Marcellus had expired a little before day. 
Thus perished by the ruthless hand of a most detestable assas- 
sin this illustrious man. He whom his enemies had spared 
from respect to his virtues received his death from the hand of 
a friend. I proceeded, however, to his pavilion, where I found 
two of his freedmen and a few of his slaves. All the rest, 
they said, had fled in the greatest terror, dreading 3 the con- 
sequences of the murder of their master. I was obliged to 
carry his body with me into the city, in the same litter in 
which I came, and by my own servants, where I provided as 
splendid a funeral for him as Athens could supply ; but I 
could not prevail with the Athenians to allow a place for his 
interment within the city walls, which, they said, they were 
forbidden by their religion to permit ; but they readily granted 
what was the next honour, — permission to bury him in any of 
the gymnasia I might choose for the purpose. I selected a 

3 It seems that when a Roman was murdered in his own house, his 
domestic slaves were punishable with death. See Tacit. Ann. xiv. 42. 

L 



146 LETTERS TO CICERO 

place, therefore, the noblest in the world, the school of the 
academy. There I consumed his body, and took care that 
the Athenians should erect a marble monument to him on the 
same place. Thus have I faithfully performed to him, living 
and dead, every duty that could be required at the hands of 
him who was his colleague, and his relation. 



Sulpicius, in the letter above produced, suggests no cause 
for the barbarous act of Magius, and his self-destruction, which 
immediately followed : his motive is left entirely to conjecture. 
That of Cicero was, that being oppressed with debts, he had 
been urging Marcellus, who was his surety for some part of 
them, to pay the whole, and that being peremptorily refused, 
in the madness of disappointment he killed his patron. It 
has been attributed to other reasons ; Valerius says it arose 
from jealousy at seeing others preferred to himself. Magius 
was of a family who had borne public offices, and had himself 
been quaestor. 

Marcellus was distinguished by a determined opposition to 
Csesar ; Matius, another of Cicero's accomplished friends, 
was no less remarkable for his steady attachment to Csesar. 
Among the familiar letters of Cicero and his correspondents, 
that which he wrote to Matius, and the answer returned are 
pleasing epistolary specimens, and are the more interesting 
as being the principal documents whereby the character of 
Matius has been preserved to us. 

Matius appears from certain incidental notices of him to 
have been conspicuous in his day for his elegant attainments. 4 
He seems to have found much amusement in writing poetry, 
in which he is referred to as having shewn a refined judgment 
in the use of words. His taste for gardening is also recorded. 
Cicero bears testimony to his varied accomplishments, and 
makes particular allusion to his social and colloquial talents. 
He was a principal conductor of the games in honour of Venus, 

4 See Aul. Cell. vi. 6; ix. 14; xv. 25; xx. 9. Columel. xii. 44. Plin. 
Hist. xii. 2 ; xv. 14. 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 147 

celebrated by Octavius, after the death of Julius Caesar, in 
accomplishment of a vow made by that conqueror after the 
battle of Pharsalia, which action gave great displeasure to 
the republican party, and among others to Cicero. Matius 
long survived the conflict which succeeded to the death of 
Caesar, and became distinguished among the familiar friends 
of Augustus ; at whose court, however, he declined all public 
business and official dignities, being devoted to the enjoyments 
of a literary retirement. He is said to have been the first who 
taught the art of inoculating and propagating fruit trees, and 
to have introduced the method and practice of disposing and 
(it must be owned to the discredit of his taste) of cutting trees 
and groves into regular forms. 

Cicero, in a letter to Matius, written after the part taken 
by him in the celebration of the games above mentioned, com- 
ments with great delicacy upon that and his other acts by 
which he had testified his attachment to his best friend. 
" As the dignity of your character," he observes, " draws upon 
you the attention of all the world, the malevolence of mankind 
will sometimes put severer constructions upon your actions 
than they deserve. You cannot be ignorant that if Caesar 
was really a tyrant, as I think he was, there are two ways in 
which your duty may be viewed. It may be considered, and 
this is the view I commonly take, that you shewed a very com- 
mendable fidelity, in displaying your affection to your departed 
friend ; and on the other hand, it may be said, and is indeed 
alleged, that the liberties of our country ought to be preferred 
to the life of any friend. I would you had heard with what 
zeal I have been accustomed to defend you in these discussions. 
But there are two things especially for which you are prin- 
cipally deserving of praise, and of which none speak more fre- 
quently and heartily than myself, which is this — that you, of 
all Caesar's friends, were the most active, both in recommend- 
ing pacific measures, and moderation in the use of victory ; in 
which all agree with me." 

The letter of Matius, in answer to Cicero, is remarkable 
among epistolary compositions for its grace, urbanity, and 
spirit. 



148 



LETTERS TO CICEKO 



MATIUS TO CICERO. 



Your letter gave me great satisfaction, by shewing me that 
you retain that favourable opinion of me which it has been 
my wish and hope to secure : and though I never entertained 
any doubt of it, yet the high value I set upon it has made 
me very solicitous that it should be kept inviolate. I was 
conscious to myself that I had done nothing that could 
reasonably give offence to any candid and honest man. I 
was, therefore, slow to believe that a person of your highly 
cultivated mind could be induced too hastily to give ear to 
anything thrown out against me, — against one especially who 
has always been actuated by the kindest feelings towards you. 
Since this then is the exact state in which I wished things 
to be, I will now proceed to answer all those misdemeanors 
laid to my cnarge, against which you, out of your singular 
goodness and friendship have, as it was to be expected you 
would, often defended me. I am not unacquainted with what 
has been said against me since Csesar's death. It is made a 
crime in me, that I lament the loss of an intimate friend, and 
grieve that the man I loved is no more. They say that private 
friendship ought to give place to the interests of one's country, 
as if they had already made it appear that his death was a 
benefit to the republic. But I will not disguise the truth; 
I will confess I have not yet attained to that height in the scale 
of wisdom. Nor yet did I follow Caesar in the late dissen- 
sions, but I followed my friend, whom, though not altogether 
satisfied with what was doing, I could not desert. I never 
approved of the civil war, or the cause of it, but laboured 
with the utmost assiduity to stifle it in its birth. In con- 
sistency with these sentiments, I did not seek to avail myself 
of the victory to advance or enrich myself; an advantage 
which others, who had less interest with him than I, abused 
to great excess. 

In truth, instead of gaining by Caesar, I have been a loser 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 149 

by him ; having suffered in my private fortune by his law, 5 to 
which the greatest part of those who now rejoice at his death 
owed their very continuance in the city. I laboured to obtain 
pardon for the conquered with the same zeal I should have felt 
had Lbeen pleading for my own life. Can I then, who have 
been anxious for the safety of all, forbear to reflect with sorrow 
and indignation on the destruction of him whose clemency has 
been so displayed, especially when the very same men who 
were the cause of rendering him obnoxious were the authors 
of his death? But, say these men, you shall have reason to 
repent for daring to condemn what we have done. O unheard 
of insolence ! Is it to be allowed to some to glory in a deed, 
which it is not permitted to others to deplore with impunity. 
Even slaves are allowed to fear, rejoice, and grieve at their 
own wills, not at another's dictation : which privilege, these 
men, who call themselves the authors of liberty, are endeavour- 
ing to wrest from us by the force of terror. But they shall 
not prevail. No danger shall frighten me from the perform- 
ance of my duty and the offices of humanity. 

I have never thought an honourable death was to be 
shunned, but often rather to be courted. But why are they 
incensed against me for wishing they may repent of their 
deed ? Wish I do, that that death may be the cause of regret 
to all concerned in it. But I ought, they say, to wish only 
for the preservation of the public liberty, as a good citizen. 
If my past life and future hopes do not, without my asserting 
it, give security for my zeal, I do not trouble myself to establish 
it by words. If you think that it is the clear interest of one in 
my circumstances, that what is right should be done, be sure 
that I am not so foolish as to take part with any ill-designing 
persons. Can I who took this safe course in my youth, when 
to mistake in this matter would have been pardonable, undo 
what has been done, and desert my principles in my declining 
age? I will not do it. Neither will I do anything that 

5 Caesar caused a law to be enacted for the relief of those who had con- 
tracted debts before the commencement of the civil war. 



150 LETTERS TO CICERO 

may unnecessarily give offence, unless it be an offence to 
lament the sad fate of a most dear friend and a most accom- 
plished man. Were I disposed to act differently, I should 
not conceal my acts or intentions, lest I should at once incur 
the disgrace of doing what was wrong, and the character of a 
coward for my dissimulation. True, I undertook the manage- 
ment of the games which Octavius exhibited in honour of his 
uncle's victories; but that was a private duty, and not a 
public concern. It was what it became me to perform to the 
memory and honour of my dead friend ; and what I could 
not therefore deny to a youth of the fairest hopes, and most 
worthy of Caesar. But I go often also to the consul Antony 
to pay my compliments. Yet you will find those very men 
go oftener to ask and receive favours who reflect upon me for 
it, as indicating a disaffection to my country. But what 
arrogance is this? that, when Caesar never interfered with 
my visiting whom I would, — even those whom he had no 
regard for, they who have deprived me of him should attempt 
by their censures to prevent me from placing my esteem 
where I think proper. But I do not distrust the integrity of 
my life, as insufficient to bear me up against all these 
calumnies. Nor will I suppose that they who dislike me for 
my attachment to Caesar would not rather choose a friend of 
my disposition than their own. 

If I could have my wish, I would spend what remains to 
me of life in retirement at Rhodes. But if the chances of 
life should oppose this wish, my endeavour will be so to 
pass my days in Rome, as to have an interest in the main- 
tenance of what is just and right. 

To Trebatius I feel very grateful for conveying to me the 
assurance of your sincere and friendly sentiments towards me; 
and for supplying me with fresh reasons for cultivating the 
friendship of one whom my heart has always been disposed to 
love. Farewell. And continue to bear me in your affection. 



Brutus's letters to Cicero have been loaded bv Markland 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 151 

with contemptuous epithets. He has called them " silly 
stuff, which one cannot read without indignation," and Cicero 
himself has censured him, as " Churlish, unmannerly, and 
arrogant in his correspondence with him, and as regarding 
neither .what, nor to whom, he was writing." Some of the 
letters which passed between these great men, while the con- 
sequences of the assassination of Julius Csesar were in such 
fearful suspense between the contending factions, (Brutus and 
Cassius being masters of the eastern provinces, and the destiny 
of the young and wily Octavius, in a rapid progress to its ac- 
complishment,) bring the characters of Brutus and Cicero into 
striking contrast. Octavius at the age of twenty had demanded 
the consulship, a claim without a warrant or precedent in the 
customs of the commonwealth. Neither Cicero nor any 
other magistrate stood forth to propose him, though Cicero 
was not unsuspected of secretly favouring his designs. The 
demand was, however, made by a deputation of his officers ; 
and Octavius having marched his legions into the city, it met 
with no opposition. 

The conduct of Cicero had given offence to Brutus, who 
could not but remark his courtship of the young Octavius, 
and was far from approving of his severe proceedings against 
Antony and Lepidus, whom he was doing his utmost to 
depress, the better as it would seem to recommend himself 
to the young Csesar, who was now rising fast to the great 
object of his ambition. In this state of vacillation on the 
part of Cicero, Atticus, as a common friend, was employed 
to enquire into the cause and extent of Brutus's displeasure, 
which drew from Brutus the following letter, by some called 
one of the most precious pieces of antiquity. 

BRUTUS TO ATTICUS. 

You tell me that Cicero wonders why I never take any notice 
of his acts. Since you require it then, and extort it from 
me, I will tell you what I think of them. That Cicero has 
done everything with the best intention I well know; for 



152 LETTERS TO CICERO 

what can I possibly be more assured of than of his good feel- 
ing towards the republic? Yet, some things he seems to 
have done, shall I say, Imprudently ! Shall I say this of 
a man of all others the most prudent? or ambitiously! Of 
one who for the sake of the republic has not scrupled to make 
Antony, powerful as he is, his enemy. I am at a loss what 
to write except this one thing; — that the ambition and licen- 
tiousness of that boy have been encouraged, rather than 
repressed by Cicero ; and that he carries his indulgence of 
him so far, as not to abstain even from reproachful language 
against others, and such as returns doubly upon himself: since 
he has taken away the life of more than one, 6 and must con- 
fess himself to be an assassin, before he can reproach Casca 
for what he has done, and treat Casca as Bestia once 
treated him. Or because we are not boasting every moment 
of the ides of March, as he is of his nones of December, has 
he for that reason any better pretext for censuring our most 
laudable act, than Bestia and Clodius had for inveighing 
against his consulship? Cicero boasts that he in his gown has 
sustained the war against Antony : but of what service is that 
to me if the succession to Antony's place be claimed as the 
reward for oppressing Antony ? and if the avenger of that evil 
has been the author of another which is likely to be more firmly 
established, and to take a deeper root, if we suffer it ? As if 
all he is doing was done not from fear of having a master, 
but of having Antony for his master. But for my part, I 
cannot think myself obliged to a man who, as long as he 
does not serve an angry lord, has no quarrel with servitude 
itself; nay, decrees triumphs and pay, and every kind of 
honour to another. It is a reproach to any man to desire such 
a condition of life as he has taken upon himself. Is this the 
part of a consular ? This of Cicero ? Since you would not 
suffer me to be silent, you will read what must necessarily 
make you uneasy, for I feel uneasiness enough in writing it. 



6 Lentulus, Cathegus, Statilius, Gabinius, Ceparius, Catiline's accomplices, 
were put to death without a formal hearing before the people, required by an 
old law of Portius Laeca, a tribune, and a later one of C. Gracchus. 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 153 

Nor am I ignorant what your sentiments are with regard to 
the republic ; which, desperate as it is, you think possible to 
be retrieved. Nor in truth, Atticus, do I blame you; for 
your years, your principles, your children make you averse to 
action : which I perceived also from the account of our friend 
Flavius. But to return to Cicero. What difference is there 
between him and Salvidienus ; 7 or what more would Salvi- 
dienus himself decree to Octavius? He is still afraid, you 
will say, of the remains of the civil war. But can anybody 
be so afraid of a routed enemy, 8 as to think neither the power 
of one who is at the head of a conquering army, nor the rash- 
ness of a boy at all to be feared ? Or does he do all this 
because he thinks that everything ought freely to be given up 
to him, on the account of his great power. 9 

O the strange folly of fear ! to be so cautious of shunning 
what we are afraid of, that, instead of avoiding it, as we might 
perhaps have done, we invite and draw it upon ourselves. 
We have too great a dread of death, of exile, and of poverty. 
These Cicero regards as the chief ills of life ; and as long as 
he can find people who will grant him what he desires, — who 
will respect and applaud him, — he has no objection to slavery, 
provided it be an honourable one — if any thing can be honour- 
able in a state of the most abject contumely. 

Let Octavius then call him father, refer all things to him, 
praise, thank him ; it will be seen, at last, how opposed to 
each other are his words and acts. For what is so opposite 
to the common sense of mankind as to hold any one in the 
place of a father who cannot be ranked in the number even 
of freemen ? And yet all that this excellent man is aiming 
at, all that he is doing, tends only to this — that Octavius 

7 One of the zealous adherents of Octavius. 

8 Antony. 

9 When Octavius marched with his army against Antony, Cicero moved 
the senate to decree him the command as propraetor; that he should carry on 
the war in conjunction with the two consuls, and that he should have a seat in 
the senate, with the rank of praetor. After the first battle of Mutina, they 
decreed him, on Cicero's motion, a thanksgiving of fifty days, with the title 
of Imperator, in common with the consuls. 



154 LETTERS TO CICERO 

may be kind to him. I can no longer set any value on those 
arts of which I know Cicero to be so great a master ; for of 
what use to him are all the fine things that he has written 
with such eloquence for the liberty of his country, or on 
dignity, death, exile, poverty ? How much better does Phi- 
lippus 10 seem to understand these subjects, who was more 
reserved in his concessions to a son-in-law than Cicero to a 
stranger ? Let him forbear, then, in his boastings to insult 
even our miseries. For what is it to us that Antony is 
vanquished, if his fall has made room only for another to 
possess his place? Though your letters even still speak 
dubiously of him. 

Let Cicero, then, live on, since he can submit to it, sup- 
pliant and obnoxious ; if he has no regard either to his years 
or his honours, or the acts of his past life. As for me, I will 
wage war with the thing itself; that is, with tyranny, with 
extraordinary commands, with every power that seeks to 
advance itself above the laws; nor shall any condition of 
servitude, how advantageous soever, divert me from it; 
though Antony be, as you write, an honest man ; which was 
never my opinion of him. But as to a master, our ancestors 
would never endure one, though he were even a parent. If I 
did not love you as much as Cicero persuades himself he is 
beloved by Octavius, I would not have written this to you. 
It grieves me to think how much you are displeased, you 
who love all your friends so warmly, and, above all, Cicero. 
But assure yourself that I have abated nothing of my par- 
ticular affection, though a great deal of my judgment, in 
favour of him : for we cannot help pronouncing upon things 
according to the light in which they appear to us. 



The above letter throws at once a considerable light upon 
the state of Rome at this crisis, and upon the character of 
Cicero himself; but it is difficult to see what ground it affords 
for the severe censure passed by Markland and Middleton 

10 Philippus was Octavius's father-in-law. 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 155 

upon the tone and temper of Brutus's letters. Brutus, no 
doubt, had a very fallacious and misty perception of right 
and duty, but on his own principles, erroneous as they were, 
he stood firm and erect, and maintained a courageous con- 
sistency, or rather an invincible pertinacity : and after such 
a deed of atrocity as that in which his hands had been 
engaged, one cannot but be surprized to find the traces 
neither of ambition nor cruelty in any part of his subsequent 
conduct. 

In a letter to Brutus, written some little time after that 
which has been produced, Cicero, to whom Brutus had inti- 
mated his disapprobation of his conduct, explained and vindi- 
cated the course he had pursued since the death of Julius 
Csesar to his suspecting friend. 

CICERO TO BRUTUS. 11 

You have Messala with you. How is it possible, therefore, 
for me to explain by letter, though ever so accurately com- 
posed, the present state of our public transactions more pre- 
cisely than he, who both knows them all more perfectly, and can 
relate and describe them to you more elegantly than any other 
man? For do not imagine, Brutus, (though there is no occa- 
sion for me to write what you know already yourself, but I 
cannot pass over in silence such an assemblage of all excel- 
lent qualities) do not imagine, I say, that for probity, con- 
stancy, care, and zeal for the republic, there is any one equal 
to him ; so that eloquence, in which he wonderfully excels, 
hardly finds a place amongst his other praises ; and even in 
his eloquence wisdom is its most conspicuous quality ; with 
so much judgment and art has he formed himself to the 
truest manner of speaking. His industry, all the while, is so 
remarkable, and he spends so much of his time in study, that 
he seems to owe but little to his natural abilities, which never- 
theless are of the highest order. But I am carried too far by 

11 This letter is also inserted in this chapter, as belonging more immediately 
to the transactions under review. 



15G LETTERS TO CICERO 

my love for him ; for it is not the purpose of this epistle to 
praise Messala, especially to Brutus, to whom his virtue is 
not less known than to myself; and to whom those studies, 
which I am commending, are still more known. Of this man 
I could not take leave without regret, but I comforted myself 
with reflecting, that, by going to you as to my second self, he 
was at once discharging a duty and pursuing the truest path 
of glory. 

I come now, after a long interval, to consider a certain 
letter of yours, wherein, while you allow me to have done well 
in many things, you find fault with me for being too free and 
prodigal in conferring honours. This is your charge against 
me in this particular; while others accuse me of too great 
severity in punishing : you, perhaps, may think I am charge- 
able with both these faults. If so, my desire is that the rea- 
sons by which I am influenced in both these respects may be 
fully apprehended by you. Not that I mean to justify myself 
by the maxim of Solon, the wisest of the seven, and the only 
legislator of them all ; who used to say, that " the public 
weal was comprised in two things, — rewards and punishments," 
in which, as in every thing, there is a certain medium and 
temperament to be observed. But it is not my design, at this 
time, to discuss so great a subject; yet I think it not im- 
proper to lay open the motives of my opinions, and votes, in 
the senate, from the beginning of this war. 

After the death of Caesar, and those your memorable ides 
of March, you cannot forget, Brutus, what I declared to have 
been omitted by you, and what a tempest I saw hanging over 
the republic. You had freed us from a great plague ; wiped 
off a great stain from the Roman people, and acquired to 
yourselves divine glory; yet all the equipage of kingly power 
was still left to Lepidus and Antony : the one inconstant, the 
other vicious ; both of them afraid of peace, and enemies to 
the public quiet. While these were wishing to raise fresh 
disturbances in the state, we had no troops at hand which we 
could oppose to them, though the whole city was unanimous 
in asserting its liberty. I was then thought too violent; 
whilst you, perhaps more wisely, withdrew yourself from that 



frl 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 159 

city which you had delivered, and refused the help of all 
Italy, which offered to arm itself in your cause. Wherefore, 
when I saw the city in the hands of rebels, and oppressed by 
the arms of Antony, and that neither you nor Cassius could 
be safe in it, I thought it time for me to quit it too. For a 
city overpowered by traitors, without the means of relieving 
itself, is a wretched spectacle. Yet my mind, always the 
same, and ever fixed on the love of my country, could not 
bear the thought of leaving it in its distress. In the midst, 
therefore, of my voyage to Greece, and in the very season of the 
Etesian winds, when an uncommon southern gale, as if dis- 
pleased with my determination, had driven me back to Italy, 
I found you at Velia, and was greatly concerned at it. For you 
were retreating, Brutus; were retreating, I say, since your 
stoics will not allow their wise men to fly. As soon I as came 
to Rome, I exposed myself to the wickedness and rage of An- 
tony, whom I had exasperated against me ; and then I began to 
enter into measures, in the very spirit of the Brutus's (for 
such are peculiar to your blood), for the delivery of the 
republic. I shall omit the long recital of what followed, since 
it relates to myself, and observe only that this young Csesar, 
by whom, if we are willing to confess the truth, we subsist at 
this day, is the offspring of my counsels. I decreed him no 
honours, Brutus, but what were due; none but what were 
necessary. For when we first began to recover some liberty ; 
when the divine virtue of Decimus Brutus lay yet undisclosed 
in its true force, and our whole defence was in the boy who 
had delivered our necks from Antony, what honour was not 
really due to him ? Though I gave him nothing yet but 
words of praise, and even those in a moderate degree. I decreed 
him, indeed, a legal command, 12 which, though it seemed 
honourable to one of his age, was yet necessary to one who 
had an army : for what is an army without a delegated com- 
mand? Philippus decreed him a statue; Servius the privi- 
lege of suing for offices before the legal time ; which time was 
shortened afterwards by Servilius. Nothing was then thought 

12 As propraetor, with the rank of preetor in the senate. 



158 LETTERS TO CICERO 

too much. But men are apt, I know not how, to be more 
liberal in fear than grateful in success. 

When Decimus Brutus was delivered from the siege, a day 
of all others the most joyous to the city, and which happened 
also to be his birthday, I decreed that his name should for 
ever be written opposite to that day in the public calendars : 
in which I followed the example of our ancestors, who paid 
the same honours to a woman, Larentia, at whose altar your 
priests performed the sacred rites in the Velabrum. By 
giving this to Decimus Brutus, my design was to fix in the 
calendars a perpetual memorial of a most gratifying victory. 
But I perceived on that day that there was more malevolence 
than gratitude in many of the senate. During these days I 
poured out honours (since you will have it so) on the deceased 
Hirtius and Pansa, and on Aquila also ; and who can find 
fault with it but those who, when fear is once over, forget 
their past danger. But besides the grateful remembrance of 
past services, there was a view in it which reached to pos- 
terity : for I was desirous there should remain an eternal 
monument of the public hatred of our most cruel enemies. I 
suspect there is one thing which does not please you ; for it 
does not please your people here, who, though excellent men, 
have but little experience in public affairs, — that I decreed an 
ovation to Caesar : but for my part, though I may perhaps be 
mistaken, (nor am I yet one of those who are the most pleased 
always with what orginates with themselves 13 ) I cannot but 
think that I have advised nothing more prudent during the war. 
Why it is so is not proper to be explained, lest I should be 
thought to have been more provident than grateful in this pro- 
ceeding. But even this is too much. Let us pass to other 
things. I decreed honours to Decimus Brutus ; decreed them 
to Plancus. To be attracted by glory is the characteristic of 
great minds : and that senate is wise who adopts any means, 
provided they are honourable, by which any one may be 
gained to the service of the republic. But I am blamed in the 
case of Lepidus, to whom I had raised a statue in the rostra, 

13 The character given by Cicero of Brutus in some of his letters to Atticus. 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 159 

which I presently threw down again. My view was to re- 
claim him by that honour from desperate measures ; but the 
madness of the inconstant man succeeded against my pru- 
dence : nor was there so much harm in erecting as there was 
good in demolishing that statue. 

But I have said enough concerning honours, and must now 
say a word or two about punishments : for I have often 
observed from your letters that you are fond of acquiring a 
reputation for clemency, by your treatment of those whom 
you have conquered in war. I can imagine nothing to be 
done by you but what is wisely done : but to omit the punish- 
ment of wickedness, which we call pardoning, though it may 
be allowable in other cases, I take to be pernicious in this 
war. For of all the civil wars which have happened in my 
memory, there was not one in which, what side soever got the 
better, there would not have remained some form of a common- 
wealth ; but in this, what sort of a republic we are likely, if 
victorious, to have, I would not pretend to affirm ; but if we are 
conquered we are sure to have none. My votes therefore 
were severe against Antony ; severe against Lepidus ; not 
from any spirit of revenge, but to deter wicked citizens from 
making war against their country, and to leave an example 
to posterity, that none hereafter might be disposed to imitate 
such rashness. Yet this very vote was not more mine than it 
was everybody's ; in which there seems, I own, to be some- 
thing cruel, that the punishment should reach to children 
who have done nothing to deserve it ; but this condition of 
things is ancient, and belongs to the constitution of all states. 
Themistocles' children were reduced to' want. And since the 
same punishment falls upon all citizens condemned for public 
crimes, how was it possible for us to be more gentle towards the 
enemies of the state ? For what reason can that man have to 
complain of me, who, if he had conquered, must needs confess 
that he would have treated me with even greater severity. 

You have now the grounds of my opinions, as far as they 

relate to the charge of rewards and punishments : for, as to 

, other points, you have heard, I suppose, what my sentiments 

and votes have been : the mention of them, therefore, is not so 



]60 LETTERS TO CICERO 

necessary. What I am about to mention, Brutus, is greatly 
so ; that you come with your army to Italy as soon as possible. 
There is the utmost expectation of you. Whenever you set 
foot, in Italy, all the world will run to you. For, whether it 
be our lot to conquer (as we had already done, if Lepidus 
had not been desirous to overturn all, and to perish, himself 
with his friends) there will be a great want of your authority to 
settle some form of a civil state amongst us ; or, if there be any 
danger or struggle still behind, our greatest hope is in your 
authority, as well as in the strength of your army. But 
hasten to us, I beseech you ; for you know how much depends 
on opportunity ; how much on dispatch. Of the diligence 
I shall use in the care of your sister's children, you will be 
informed, I hope, by the letters of your mother and sister ; 
in whose cause I have more regard to your will, which is ever 
most dear to me, than, as some think, to my own constancy. 
But it is my desire both to be and to appear constant in 
nothing so much as in loving you. 



The last inserted letter may be regarded as a very clear expo- 
sition of the state of public affairs, and of Cicero's part in them, 
at the commencement of the civil wars which immediately 
succeeded the death of Julius Caesar; and may be taken as a 
fair specimen of his manner of expressing himself on civil and 
political events, and the actors in them. He soon began to 
perceive that Octavius was taking a course which, under the 
pretext of revenging his uncle's death, was tending to scatter 
the elements of freedom, and set up his own supremacy upon 
the ruins of the commonwealth. 

It then became the great object of Cicero to turn the young 
man from his purpose, and effect a reconciliation between him 
and Brutus, and, if possible, to persuade him to acquiesce in 
the amnesty which had been decreed by the senate. Atticus, 
the common friend of both, thinking he should thereby gratify 
Brutus, sent him what Cicero had written on this subject. 
But the efforts of Cicero in this behalf thus made known to 
Brutus by their friend Atticus, provoked the high displeasure 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 161 

of Brutus, who expressed these feelings to Cicero in such 
plain terms, as to subject him to the charge, as before observed, 
of writing with arrogance and asperity. 

Of the personage, with the mention of whom Cicero began 
the important letter last above introduced, Publius Valerius 
Messala Corvinus, it is but due praise to observe that he was 
one of the most virtuous and accomplished characters recorded 
in Roman annals. Having survived these sanguinary dis- 
turbances, during which his conduct was equally marked 
by integrity and discretion, he became a principal ornament 
of the court of Augustus. He adhered to the cause of ex- 
piring liberty till it was buried with Brutus his friend, and 
after the battle of Philippi surrendered to Antony ; but being 
thrown wholly on the side of Octavius by the scandal of 
Antony's life, he distinguished himself at the battle of 
Actium on the conquering side. He had been a scholar of 
Cicero, under whose precepts and example he rose to be 
one of the finest orators which Rome has produced, to which 
accomplishment he added a remarkable proficiency in all the 
liberal arts. 

BRUTUS TO CICERO. 

I have read a small part of your letter to Octavius, trans- 
mitted to me by Atticus. Your zeal and concern for my safety 
gave me no new pleasure, for it is not only our common, 
but our daily news to hear something which you have said 
or done with your usual fidelity in support of my honour and 
dignity. Yet that same part of your letter affected me with 
the most sensible grief which my mind could possibly receive. 
For you compliment him so highly for his services to the 
republic, and in a strain so suppliant and abject that — what 
shall I say? I am ashamed of the wretched state to which we 
are reduced ; yet it must be said, you recommend my safety 
to him, (to which what death is not preferable ?) and thus make 
it manifest that our servitude is not yet abolished, but our 
master only changed. Recollect your words, and deny them, 
if you dare, to be the prayers of a subject to his king. There 

M 



162 LETTERS TO CICERO 

is one thing, you say, which is required and expected from 
him — that he would allow those citizens to live in safety, of 
whom all honest men and the people of Rome think well. 
But what if he will not allow it ? shall we be the less safe 
for that ? It is better not to be safe, than to be saved by him. 
For my part, I can never think all the gods so averse to the 
preservation of the Roman people, that Octavius must be 
entreated for the life of any one citizen ; not to say for the 
deliverers of the world. These are the lofty terms in which 
I have a pleasure in declaring myself, and it becomes me to 
use this language to those who know not what to fear from, 
or what to ask of, any one. Can you allow Octavius to 
possess this power, and yet be his friend ? Or if you have 
any value for me, would you wish to see me at Rome ; when 
it behoves me first to be recommended to this boy, that he 
would permit me to be there ? What reason can you have to 
thank him, if you think it necessary to beg of him that he 
would suffer us to live in safety ? Or is it to be considered a 
kindness that he chooses to see himself rather than Antony, 
in the condition to have such petitions presented to him? 
One may supplicate, indeed, the successor, but what need is 
there to supplicate the abolisher of a tyranny, that those who 
have deserved well of the republic may be safe? It was this 
weakness and despair, not more blameable, indeed, in you than 
in all, which first incited Csesar to the ambition of reigning ; 
and after his death encouraged Antony to think of seizing his 
place ; and which has now raised this boy so high, that you 
judge it necessary to address your supplications to him for the 
preservation of men such as we are; and that we are to be saved 
only by the mercy of one, scarcely yet a man, and by no other 
means. But if we had remembered ourselves to be Romans, 
these infamous men would not be more daring to aim at 
dominion than we to repel it; nor would Antony be more en- 
couraged by Caesar's reign, than deterred by his fate. How 
can you, a consular senator, and the avenger of so many treasons, 
(by suppressing which, you have but postponed our ruin, I fear, 
for a time) reflect on what you have done, and yet approve 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 163 

these things, or bear them so tamely, as to seem to approve 
them? For what particular quarrel had you with Antony? No 
other, but that he assumed all this to himself; that our lives 
should be begged of him; — that we from whom he had received 
liberty, should hold our safety in precarious dependence upon 
his will; — that the republic should be at his disposal. You 
thought it necessary to take arms to arrest his tyranny. But 
was this done only, that a stop being put to him, we might 
carry our submission to another, who might condescend to be 
put in his place; or was it that the republic might be its own 
mistress : unless after all, our quarrel was not with slavery, but 
with the conditions of it. No doubt, we might have had an 
easy master in Antony, and whatever share with him we 
pleased, could we have been content with such a state of 
things: for what could he have denied to those whose toler- 
ance would have been the best support of his domination. 
But nothing was of such value to us as to be worth the sacri- 
fice of our fidelity and liberty. This very boy, whom the 
name of Ceesar seems to stimulate against the slayers of 
Caesar, how would he value (if there were really room to treat 
with him,) our help towards the attainment of his objects; 
we being content to live, and to be rich, and to be called con- 
sulars. But Caesar would then have perished in vain. For 
what reason have we to rejoice at his death, if still our lot is 
to be slaves? Let others be as unconcerned as they will; but 
may the powers of heaven sooner take all from me, than the 
determination not to allow to the heir of the man I killed 
what I would not allow to the man himself. No, nor would 
I suffer my father, were he living, to possess a power above 
the laws and the senate. 

Can you persuade yourself, that any one can be free under 
him, without whose leave there is no place for us in that city? 
Or how is it possible for you, after all, to obtain what you 
ask ? You ask that he would allow us to be safe. Shall we 
then receive safety when we receive life ? But how can we 
receive it, if we first part with our honour and our liberty? 
Do you fancy that to live at Rome is to be safe? It is the 



164 LETTERS TO CICERO 

thing, and not the place, which must secure that to me ; for 
I was never safe, while Caesar lived, till I had resolved on that 
attempt: nor can I be an exile any where as long as I con- 
tinue to abhor slavery and contumely beyond all other evils. 
Is it not to fall back into the same state of darkness in which 
we were, when he who has taken upon him the name of the 
tyrant must be entreated that the avengers of tyranny may be 
safe, while in the cities of Greece the punishment of tyrants is 
extended to their children? Can I ever wish to see that city 
or think it a city, which would not accept liberty when 
offered, and even forced upon it, but has more dread of the 
name of their late king in the person of a boy, than reliance 
on itself, though it has seen that very king taken off in the 
plenitude of his power by the virtue of a few? If you listen 
to me, you will no more after this recommend either me or 
yourself to this your Caesar. You set a high value on the 
few years that remain to you at your age, if for their sake 
you can become a supplicant to that boy. Henceforth have a 
care, lest what you have done and are doing with respect to 
Antony, instead of being praised as the effect of magnanimity, 
be imputed to fear : for if you are so pleased with Octavius 
as to petition him for our safety, you will be thought not to 
have disliked a master, but to have wanted only a more 
friendly one. 

As to your praising him for the things that he has hitherto 
done, I approve of it ; they deserve to be praised, provided he 
did them to repel the power of others, not to advance his own. 
But when you adjudge him not only to have this power, but 
think you ought to submit to it so far as to entreat him that 
he would not destroy us, you make him too great a recompense ; 
you give to him what the republic seemed to enjoy through 
him. Nor does it seem to occur to you, that if Octavius 
deserves any honours, because he makes war against Antony, 
that those who extirpated the very evil of which these are 
but the relics, can never be sufficiently requited by the Roman 
people, though they were to heap upon them everything in 
their power to bestow ; but see how much stronger people's 



FROM HIS FRIENDS. 165 

fears are than their memories ; because Antony still lives, 
and is in arms. 

As to Csesar, all that could and ought to have been done 
has been done, and cannot be undone, to be done again in 
any other manner. Is then Octavius so great a man, that the 
people of Rome are to wait in suspense his judgment upon 
us? Or are we so little, that any one man is to be entreated 
for our safety ? As for me, that I may return to Rome, not 
only will I not supplicate any man, but I will restrain those 
from doing it who are disposed to do it for themselves : or I 
will remove to a distance from all such who can be slaves, and 
will think myself at Rome wherever I can live free, and shall 
pity you whose fond desire of life — neither age, nor honours, 
nor the example of other men's virtue can reduce. For my 
own part, I shall ever think myself happy, solaced with the 
constant and perpetual conviction, that my piety to my 
country has met its reward ; for what condition can be better 
than for a man supported by the recollection of noble actions, 
and in full content with his liberty, to look with indifference 
on all human things. Never will I yield to those who suffer 
themselves to be trampled upon by others, nor be conquered 
by those who submit to be conquered. I will make experi- 
ment of all things, and try every resource, nor will ever desist 
from dragging our state out of slavery. If that fortune 
attends me which ought to attend me, we shall all rejoice; 
if not, still I shall rejoice myself. For how can this life be 
better spent than in acts and thoughts which tend to make 
my countrymen free. I beseech you, Cicero, not to desert the 
cause through weariness or want of confidence. In repelling 
present evils have your eyes always on the future, lest it steal 
upon you before you are aware. Consider that the fortitude 
and courage with which you delivered the republic, when 
consul, and again a consular, are nothing without constancy 
and perseverance. The case of tried, is, I own, harder than 
of untried virtue. We exact services as debts in the former 
case, and if disappointed, we feel especially resentful, as 
persons deceived. Wherefore, for Cicero to withstand Antony, 



166 LETTERS TO CICERO FROM HIS FRIENDS. 

though very commendable, yet because such a consul pro- 
mised such a consular, nobody wondered at it: but if the 
same Cicero in the case of others should waver at last in that 
resolution, which he exerted with such firmness and great- 
ness of mind against Antony, he would deprive himself not 
only of the hopes of future glory, but make even his glory 
past to disappear. Nothing is great in itself but that in 
which a determination of the judgment is apparent. Nor is 
it the duty of any man more than of you to shew attachment 
and devotion to the republic, and to be a patron of liberty ; 
called upon as you are by your abilities, by the things you 
have performed, by the regard and expectation of all men. 
Wherefore, I hold, that Octavius ought not to be asked to 
permit us to live in safety. Rather encourage yourself to 
think the city, in which you have done such great things, to 
be free and honourable, only so long as there are in it leaders 
of the people to oppose the designs of the profligate. 



If a letter deserves to be admired for the image it reflects 
of the writer's character, where that character is illustrious, 
and connected with the events of a great historical period, the 
letter of Marcus Brutus, above produced, is one of the most 
noble epistolary monuments of antiquity. It wears such a 
stamp of stern magnanimity, that, if graduated in the scale 
of heathen ethics, we must admit its testimony to the great- 
ness and worth of the man from whose pen it proceeded. We 
see in it a just ground for the high rank assigned to Brutus 
among letter-writers by Philostratus, rather than an apology 
for the censure of Markland or the reproaches of Cicero. He 
was a man holding, no doubt, most erroneous views, and 
contemplating his duty through the medium of a most per- 
verse morality ; how could it be otherwise under the teaching 
of a presumptuous philosophy, the fruit of our fallen nature ? 
it was nevertheless the product of a mind fitted for the loftiest 
attainments of humanity. Had he come into the world a 
century later, he might have died a christian martyr. 



167 



CHAPTER XII. 

LETTERS OF CICERO TO HIS FRIENDS. 

We come now to the more particular consideration of Cicero's 
own letters. The published letters of Seneca and Pliny, 
though possessing great merit and interest, and in some 
respects hardly surpassed by any specimens in the same 
department, either ancient or modern, are in general inferior, 
in the graces appropriate to this species of composition, to 
those of Cicero, whose glory it was to commence and consum- 
mate its characteristic excellence. Bentley, in his general 
character of the epistles of Phalaris, contrasts them with 
those of Cicero in the following terms : — " It would be end- 
less to prosecute this part, and shew all the silliness and imper- 
tinency in the matter of the epistles. For, take them in the 
whole bulk, I should say they are a fardel of common places, 
without any life or spirit from action or circumstance. Do 
but cast your eye upon Cicero's letters, or any statesman's, as 
Phalaris was ; what lively characters of men there ! what 
descriptions of place ! what notifications of time ! what par- 
ticularity of circumstances ! what multiplicity of designs and 
events ! When you return to those again, you feel, by the 
emptiness and deadness of them, that you converse with some 
dreaming pedant, with his elbow on his desk; not with an 
active ambitious tyrant, with his hand upon his sword, com- 
manding a million of subjects." That we find in 'Cicero's 
letters lively characters of men, interesting descriptions of 
places, important notifications of passing things, and a multi- 
plicity of great designs and memorable events, will not be 
denied by any accurate enquirer; and the scholar will as little 
deny that he has made his native language meet the wants of 



168 LETTERS OE CICERO 

his capacious mind with a remarkable power over its resources. 
His fluctuating and unstable character, no less than his 
vanity and love of distinction, though his moral standard was 
thereby considerably lowered, seemed to minister occasion to 
those varied forms of diction and expression in which the 
genius of animated letter-writing may be said to delight ; 
while the force of his intellect gave an extraordinary expansion 
to the language in which he wrote, carrying it to the utmost 
bound which its idiom and analogies would bear. Where its 
native resources failed he engrafted the Greek upon it, and 
thus multiplied its affinities and increased its derivative 
stores. x 

Yet was Cicero more than others sensible of the powers 
and beauties indigenous in his own language, — of that avro^- 
0o)v urbanitas, which he commends so much in his letter to 
Atticus. 2 In the Roman language a certain festivity seems to 
have inhered, which very imperfectly imparts itself to modern 
apprehension. This ancient vernacular humour must have 
been very sensibly appreciated by Cicero to have been thus 
preferred by him to the Attic salt, of which, in other places, 
as in his book " De Oratore," he expresses his admiration. 3 
We see, too, in this and other instances, how the particular 
graces of epistolary writing, after ages past in ignorance of 
its moral use and advantages, seemed at once to disclose 
themselves to the vigorous and keen capacity of this accom- 
plished man ; and to him principally we are indebted for 
furnishing the principles and model of an art which has 



1 Postea mihi placuit, eoque sum usus adolescens, ut summorum oratorum 
graecas orationes explicarem ; quibus lectis hoc assequebar, ut, cum ea qua? 
legerem graece, latine redderem, non solum optimis verbis uterer, et tamen 
usitatis, sq^ etiam exprimerem quaedam verba imitando, quae nova nostris 
essent, dummodo essent idonea. Cic. de Orat. I. i. s. xxxiv. 

2 Ad. Att. 1. vii. ep. 2. " Moriar si praeter te quenquam reliquum habeo, 
in quo possim imaginem antiquae et vernaculae festivitatis agnoscere." Ad 
Fam. 1. ix. ep. 15. And again, " Acceduntnon Attici, sed salsiores quam illi 
Atticorum, Romani veteres, atque urbani sales." 

3 Dial, de Orat. 1. ii. s. liv. 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 169 

given a new impulse to sensibility, wit, and invention ; and 
opened new veins of knowledge and enquiry. 

The letters to Atticus, as they breathe the language of the 
most intimate friendship, and are full of private and confiden- 
tial allusions to circumstances known only to the parties 
themselves, are in very many parts with difficulty interpreted 
and imperfectly understood, but they are worthy of a diligent 
perusal, as the vehicles of much valuable information respect- 
ing the characters and designs of the various actors in the 
closing scene of the Roman republic. The letters of Atticus 
have unfortunately none of them come down to us, either to 
throw light upon those which were written to him by Cicero, 
or to afford us a specimen of his polite and peaceful share in 
a correspondence, teeming, on the part of his friend, with 
disastrous details of vice and crime. The aspect of the times, 
indeed, frowned upon the disposition of Cicero to frequent 
indulgence in that sportive vein in which he was very com- 
petent to excel. In many of his letters we are agreeably 
struck with the gay complexion of his thoughts, and are 
made to regret that his overwhelming public cares left so 
small a part of his mind to its natural play. 4 Yet, in spite of 
these discouragements, there is no pen of classic antiquity 
that has made correspondence by letter so pleasing a hand- 
maid to knowledge and enquiry, or so interesting a medium 
of affectionate intercourse. 

Among all the letters of Cicero there is not one which 
makes a fuller exposure of his extreme vanity than his cele- 
brated letter to Lucceius ; while it affords a specimen of Latin 
composition no where excelled in the graces and delicacies of 
expression. These qualities have not been neglected by the 
last elegant translator, but in this, as in some of his other 
efforts to introduce Cicero to us in our own language, the 
energy of the original has been diluted by a needless multipli- 
cation of words, and an affected tenuity and circuity of diction. 

4 Jocerne tecum per literas ? civem, mehercule non puto esse qui tempori- 
bus his ridere possit. Ad. Fam. 1. ii. ep. iv. Quae enim soluto animo 
familiariter scribi solent, temporibus his excluduntur. Ad. Att. 1. ix. ep. iv. 



170 LETTERS OF CICERO 

It seems to have been sometimes not enough considered by 
him, that to depart from the words of his original for the sake 
of some fancied grace, is a breach of contract in a translator, 
and a violation of the faith to which he is pledged by his 
undertaking. There is a bloom belonging to original thought 
which an attempt to improve, is only to impair. Mr. Mel- 
moth, both in the letters of Cicero and Pliny, has been some- 
times led away by the conceit of improving upon his original; 
and seems to have been rather too fine a gentleman for a 
faithful translator. Thus, in this famous letter to Lucceius, 
"Litera enim non erubescit" is rendered "for a letter, you 
know, spares the confusion of a blush." And the same ten- 
dency discovers itself in other letters, where the strength and 
brevity of the original have been lost in expansion. 5 

CICERO TO LUCCEIUS. 

When present with you, I have been often on the point of 
breaking silence on a particular subject, when a certain half- 
rustic shame has stopped me ; which subject, when thus absent 
from you, I can bring forward with more boldness; for a 
letter does not blush. I burn with a desire incredibly strong, 
nor, I trust, a reprehensible one, to have my name celebrated 
and adorned in your writings : with which request, although 
you are kind enough to declare your intention of complying, 
yet I am sure you will make allowance for my impatience. 
The style and character of your writings, though always such 
as to make me eagerly anticipate whatever is forthcoming 
from your pen, have nevertheless, when they appeared, far 
exceeded my expectation, and have so captivated, or rather 
inflamed me, as to make me wish as soon as possible to be 
recorded by you with commendation. Neither is it only 
to live in the memory of the generations to come that I 
look forward with a certain hope of immortality ; but my 

5 His merit, however, is very great as a pure and graceful writer, and a 
correct scholar, and interpreter. 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 171 

bosom is inflamed with the desire of enjoying, while I live, 
the testimony of your authority, the credit of your kind 
opinion, and the flattering recommendations of your powerful 
pen. Nor am I ignorant, while I am writing this, how much 
you are engrossed with the task you have already set your- 
self, and the execution of your original design. But as I 
perceived you had almost brought to a close your history of 
the Italic and Marian wars, and you had told me that you 
were about to proceed with the rest of your undertaking, I 
would not be wanting to myself by neglecting to remind 
you to consider, whether you would choose to interweave my 
actions into the general texture of your performance, or, as 
was the practice of many of the Greek historians, as of Cal- 
listhenes, Timaeus, and Polybius, who wrote their respective 
narratives of the siege of Troy, the Pyrrhic, and Numantine 
wars apart from their general histories, in detached pieces, 
you would prefer making the Catilinarian conspiracy the 
subject of a separate work. Whatever may be your determi- 
nation in these respects, it will but little affect the interests 
of my reputation ; but it will tend to the more speedy accom- 
plishment of my wishes, if, instead of waiting till, in the pro- 
secution of your history, you come to the period alluded to, 
you shall enter at once and by anticipation upon the transac- 
tions and events of that time. And, besides all this, if the 
whole force of your mind is engrossed by one topic and one 
character, I cannot but see how much more ample and grace- 
ful will probably be your whole narrative. Nor am I insen- 
sible to the immodesty of my proceeding, in imposing, in the 
first place, so burthensome a task upon you (for your present 
occupations would justify you in refusing my request), and in 
the next place, in asking you to honour me with your praise. 
What, after all, if you should happen to think that the things 
which I have presented to your notice do not deserve to be 
celebrated. But when we have once transgressed the bounds 
of modesty, we cannot recede; our wisest course is to push on 
in the same confident career. I therefore do, without reserve, 
again and again entreat you to honour me with a degree of 



172 LETTERS OF CICERO 

praise exceeding the bounds of your real opinion, though, in 
so doing, you may transgress the strict rules of history. And 
if the partiality of friendship, by which in one of your prefaces 
you declare yourself in terms most elegant, to be no more 
moved than was Hercules by pleasure in the story of him 
given us by Xenophon, should yet incline you to do me 
something more than justice, do not resist the bias, and give 
to our friendship something more than the strictness of truth 
would allow. If my earnest solicitation shall prevail with 
you to undertake what I am recommending to you, I am per- 
suaded you will find in it a subject worthy of your powers 
and abilities. From the beginning of the conspiracy to my 
return from banishment, there seems to me to be enough to fill 
a moderate volume ; in which you will have an opportunity of 
bringing into use your deep acquaintance with the science of 
political changes, by explaining the causes of revolutions, or 
suggesting the remedies for public evils; bestowing your cen- 
sure or commendation as occasions may seem to call for the 
one or the other; and, where you think there is ground for the 
exhibition of your accustomed plainness of speech, exposing 
the perfidy, the plots, and the treachery by which so many 
have endeavoured to compass my destruction. 

The casualties by which my course has been distinguished, 
will furnish a variety of matter for your pen, abounding in 
that sort of pleasure, which takes so strong a hold upon the 
mind in the perusal. For nothing tends more to the delight 
of a reader than the fortunes and vicissitudes of states, which 
though painful enough in the experience; affect us with a 
pleasing interest when we trace them through the pages of 
history. The secure remembrance of afflictions past and gone 
has its peculiar gratification. And it must be owned, there is 
something pleasing in the indulgence of our pity for others 
in a state of suffering from which we are exempt. Who can 
contemplate the dying Epaminondas on the plains of Man- 
tinea, without mingled emotions of commiseration and de- 
light; who refused to let the javelin be withdrawn from the 
wound, till he was told, in answer to his enquiry, that his 
shield had been saved from the hands of the enemy; that 



TO HIS FRIENDS* 173 

thus assured, he might tranquilly and with honour resign his 
breath, amidst the anguish of his wound. What can hold 
the mind of a reader in more eager suspense, than the flight 
and return of Themistocles ? While a mere narrative of 
general events affords little more entertainment than the 
details of our public registers. But the changeable and ambi- 
guous fortunes of an excellent person, agitate the mind with 
all the various feelings of admiration, expectation, joy, sorrow, 
hope, fear, — and if the whole is wound up by a splendid 
catastrophe, we feel the greatest delight in the perusal. For 
which reason I should be the more pleased, could you be 
induced to determine to separate from the body of your his- 
torical work, the particular account of the things and events 
in which I have borne the most conspicuous part; which will 
embrace a great variety of events, counsels, and transactions. 
Nor do I fear the imputation of endeavouring to win your 
favour by flattery, w 7 hen I acknowledge to you my ambi- 
tion to be celebrated by your pen. You are not a man to 
be ignorant of your own worth ; or to set them down for 
envious persons who do not admire you, or for flatterers, 
those who are loud in your commendation. Nor, indeed, 
am I so senseless as to desire to be transmitted to posterity by 
one, who in praising me does not advance the fame and glory 
of his own genius. Alexander, in desiring to be painted by 
Apelles, and sculptured by Lysippus, was not moved by the 
desire of gaining their favour, but judged that the display of 
their art on such a subject would be as much for their glory 
as his own. Those artificers formed resemblances of the body, 
to make the originals known to such as were unacquainted 
with them ; and, if these resemblances had never existed, 
those illustrious men would not have been the less illustrious. 
Nor was the Spartan Agesilaus, less known to fame, by not 
allowing his likeness to be exhibited in painting, or sculpture, 
than those who have been ambitious of these honours. The one 
little book of Xenophon, containing the eulogy of that king* 
has gone far beyond what all the pictures and statues in the 
world could have done for his fame. It would conduce to my 
gratification, and the honour of my name, to have you, rather 



174 LETTERS OF CICERO 

than others, for my recorder, as not only thus should I have the 
advantage of your genius to set off my actions, as Timoleon 
had that of Timesus, and Themistocles of Herodotus, but 
I should also have the testimony of a most illustrious and 
far-renowned individual ; well known and well approved 
in the gravest causes of the republic : and thus will seem to 
be imparted to me, not only the celebrity which Alexander 
when he came to Sigeum, said had been bestowed on 
Achilles by Homer, but also the weighty testimony of a 
great and illustrious man. What the poet Nsevius 6 puts into 
the mouth of Hector pleases me much, who not only rejoices 
in receiving praise, but in receiving it from one deserving 
himself of praise. 

But should I fail in obtaining this request, that is, if any 
impediment should stand in your way, (for it would be doing 
you injustice, to suppose it possible for me not to obtain my 
request, when I ask of you what you are not prevented from 
performing,) I may perhaps, find myself compelled to do, 
what some condemn, though warranted by the example of 
many illustrious men; — -I will write my own history. But to 
this method there are, as must be well known to you, the 
following objections. In writing of one's self, if an action is 
to be praised, one is constrained to speak more modestly of 
what deserves to be commended ; and to pass by what may 
merit reprehension. Add to which, the testimony in such a 
case has less strength, and the authority less weight. In fine, 
many will be apt to censure the practice, and say, that the 
heralds of the public games carry themselves more modestly, 
who when they have crowned the other victors, and have 
called out their names with a loud voice, if they are also to 
be crowned as victors before the games are over, to avoid 
being their own heralds, consign that office to another. These 
consequences I would fain avoid, and if you can be persuaded 
to take my cause into your hands, I shall avoid them. For the 
reasons, therefore, above assigned I do request you will so do. 

5 A celebrated dramatic poet, who died about 203 years b. c. Some frag- 
ments of whose works remain. 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 175 

And that you may not be surprised, that after the frequent 
notice you have given me of your intention to write an accu- 
rate history of the public counsels and events which have taken 
place in my time, and under my administration, I should 
yet be urging upon you this request with so much earnestness 
and so many words, I have only to repeat my eager desire, on 
which I have before insisted, (being as you know of a san- 
guine disposition,) not only that others, while I yet live, 
should be brought to an acquaintance with me through your 
writings, but that I myself may have the enjoyment of the 
little share of glory to which I may be entitled. 

If it be not too much trouble, you will have the goodness 
to say by letter, what is your determination as to these 
matters. If you undertake my cause, I will prepare for you 
some notes and observations respecting all the matters of 
which you will have to treat. But if you postpone the con- 
sideration to a future time, I will talk with you on the subject 
personally. In the meantime, I am sure you will not leave it 
wholly unattended to, but will polish what you have begun ; 
and continue your friendship towards me. 



1/ In those turbulent times of the republic, and amidst all the 
stimulants furnished by a tumultuous state of civil disorders 
to the worst passions of depraved humanity, there existed, 
thinly dispersed, some examples of quiet and contemplative 
life. Occasionally, though rarely, there was found a Roman 
citizen, who stood out of the vortex of public agitations, 
glad to take refuge from the distractions of the world in the 
bowers of philosophic or academic leisure. The most private 
and confidential, and therefore the most agreeable of Cicero's 
letters are those which he addresses to persons of this de- 
scription, among which, distinguished by its superior cor- 
rectness of judgment and feeling, is the letter to Marcus 
Marius, a man of cultivated mind living in rural retirement, 
and known to posterity only through the medium of this 
correspondence ; in which letter the just and humane reflee- 



176 LETTERS OF CICERO 

tions on those unhallowed customs, in which the Roman 
people of all classes found their chief amusement, exhibit 
Cicero's natural disposition in a very advantageous light. 

CICERO TO MARCUS MARIUS. 

If the suffering and infirm state of your health has prevented 
you from coming to our late public games and entertainments, 
I must ascribe your absence rather to your ill fortune than to 
your wisdom. But if you were kept away, not by the state 
of your health, but by your contempt of those things which 
others regard with so much admiration, I feel a double plea- 
sure in the consideration of your present exemption from 
bodily pain, and that soundness of mind which has raised 
you above those empty amusements to which others are so 
unreasonably addicted. In making this observation, however, 
I assume that you are enjoying the proper fruits of your leisure, 
as you used to enjoy them in that delightful retreat in which 
you were left almost wholly to yourself. Nor do I doubt that 
you have been passing your mornings in contemplating with 
delight the scenery about Stabise and Sejanum, to which you 
have opened views from your chamber, while those who have 
thus left you to your own elegant enjoyments, have with their 
senses hardly awake been nodding over their vulgar farcical 
exhibitions. Thus, no doubt, your mornings have been passed : 
the other portions of the day you have doubtless consumed in 
those recreations which you have created and planned for 
yourself in conformity with your own cultivated taste. We 
have been obliged to endure those spectacles which have had 
the sanction forsooth of Sp. Msecius. 

If you desire to be informed, I must tell you, the games 
were got up with great cost and shew ; but they were not 
such as you would have relished, if I may judge of your taste 
by my own. For some of the actors had upon this occasion 
presented themselves again upon the stage for the sake of 
bringing honour to them, whose honour, I thought, would 
have been better consulted by their withdrawing from the scene. 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 177 

Truly our friend iEsopus, with whom you have been so pleased, 
made such an exhibition of himself as convinced all men that 
he should desist from all further effort; for when he began the 
famous oath, " Si sciens fallo," his voice failed him. But 
why need I proceed to other things ; you well know the nature 
of the rest of the games. They had hardly as much humour 
and festivity as the most ordinary shews. The pomp and 
parade which accompanied this celebration took from them 
their sportive and festive character ; which pomp and parade, 
I doubt not, you would most willingly have dispensed with. 
What amusement could the six hundred mules, exhibited in 
the tragedy of Clytemnestra, have afforded to any sensible 
person? or whole regiments enclosed in the Trojan horse, 
with their shields of the elephant's hide ; or troops of horse 
and foot, in their strange and various armour, ready for battle : 
which things were sure enough to attract popular admiration, 
but would have afforded you no entertainment, Truly, in 
attending to the recitations of your Protogenes, while enter- 
taining you with any orations, save my own, you would have 
passed your time as agreeably as any of us in witnessing these 
shows. I cannot think you would have had any longing for 
our Greek or Oscian games; 7 especially as you can have 
Oscian buffooneries enough in your own rural senate. And 
I know you have so strong a dislike of every thing Greek, 
that you will not travel the Grecian road to your own villa. 
As to the athletse, you cannot regret not seeing them, as you 
despise even gladiatorial combats : and, indeed, in these 
athletic exhibitions Pompey himself has owned that he wasted 
his oil and his pains upon them. The rest of the entertain- 
ment consisted of the combats of wild beasts, which were 
exhibited every morning and evening during five days suc- 
cessively : magnificent they may be, but what gratification 
can it be to any man of a polished and cultivated mind to see 

7 Pompey gave each of these histrionic entertainments in their own several 
languages. Oscos was a region of Campania, in which farces of a coarse 
and ludicrous kind were exhibited for the entertainment of the common 
people. Tacit. Ann. L. iv, 14. Liv.vii. 2. Sueton. lib. 45. Cal. 27. Galb.13. 

N 



178 LETTERS OF CICERO 

one of our weaker species torn and mangled by a brute so 
superior in strength, or to see a noble beast transpierced by 
the hunter. Which spectacles, if they are worth seeing at 
all, have been often seen by you ; and we who saw them had 
nothing new presented to us. 

The elephants were the sport of the last day ; it was a 
spectacle looked at with wonder by the vulgar crowd. But 
enjoyment there was none. It was even accompanied by a 
sentiment of commiseration, springing from a notion that there 
is a sort of fellowship between the elephant and the human 
species. But that I may not seem to you to have been quite 
happy and at my ease during these scenic amusements, I must 
tell you, that all this while I have been wearing myself out 
with my exertions at the trial of your friend, Gallus Caninius. 

If the people would as easily consent to discharge me from 
my public duties as iEsopus, I solemnly declare I would 
desist from further exertions, and spend the remainder of my 
days with you, or such as you, in philosophical and literary 
retirement. I was weary of public business in the days of 
youth and ambition, and when I was at liberty, without offence, 
to decline defending any one whose cause I did not wish 
to advocate ; it is now become a sacrifice of life and liberty. 
Nor do I expect, as matters now go, to reap any fruit from 
my labours in this way. And I am often under the painful 
necessity of defending those who deserve no such favour at 
my hands, by the urgent request of those to whom I am under 
obligation. I am, therefore, seeking all manner of pretexts 
for living in the way agreeable to my taste. Yourself, and 
the manner in which you bestow your leisure, are the theme 
of my commendation and applause, and I bear with the 
greater composure the unfrequency of your visits, as knowing 
that were you now at Rome, I should not be able to enjoy 
your conversation, seasoned as it is with wit and pleasantry, 
nor you mine (if I possess any power of pleasing) amidst the 
harassing occupations with which I am at this time engrossed ; 
from which if I can ever be in some measure, for I do not 
desire to be wholly, released, I shall, I trust, shew you what 
it is to live a life of elegant enjoyment. But do you, in the 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 179 

meantime, do all you can to support your tottering health, 
that you may be able to ride with me about my villas in my 
litter. 

I have written to you a longer letter than I am accustomed 
to write, not as an offering of my leisure, but of my friend- 
ship, and because, as you will remember, you expressed a 
wish in a letter you wrote some time ago, that I would give 
you such an account of things as I have now sent you, that 
you might have the less to regret in having missed these 
famous games. If I have done this in the manner you wish 
I shall rejoice; if not, you will in future come yourself to 
these games, and I shall have the pleasure of seeing you here, 
and so you will no longer have to look only to my letters for 
your entertainment. 



The letters of Cicero to Curio reflect great honour upon 
him. Curio was a young man of high patrician descent, and 
greatly distinguished by his abilities, but beyond all bounds 
addicted to the vicious extravagances of this corrupt period of 
the republic. Having totally ruined himself by his wasteful 
and riotous expences, he was easily bought over, by the pay- 
ment of his enormous debts, to the service of Caesar, and 
became one of his most devoted partizans. His talents were 
such, that, in the opinion of competent judges, had he espoused 
the cause of liberty, he might at least have delayed, if not 
prevented its overthrow. 

Haud alium tanta civem tulit indole Roma, 
Aut cui plus leges deberent, recta sequenti. 

Lucan. Pkars. 1. iv. 814. 

He behaved with great bravery in support of Caesar's cause 
in Africa, where Varus commanded on the part of the 
republic ; and was slain in action against the troops of Juba, 
near Utica. He seems to have been employed as quaestor to 
Caius Clcdius, in Asia, at the time the letters of Cicero were 
addressed to him. Cicero appears to have entertained a lofty 
idea of the great qualifications of this promising young noble- 



180 



LETTERS OF CICERO 



man ; and after having brought about a reconciliation between 
him and his father, whom he had much incensed by his con- 
duct, to have laboured, with a kind and sincere interest in his 
welfare, to reclaim him from his thoughtless extravagance, 
and fix him in an honourable course. 

CICERO TO CURIO. 

I am deprived of a venerable witness of my affection for you 
by the death of your father, that illustrious man, who would 
have been no less distinguished by his own merits than by 
his felicity in having you for his son, had he but seen you 
again before he departed out of this life. But I trust our 
friendship will stand in need of no proof from testimony. 
May your patrimony be made a blessing to you. You will 
certainly have me with you, to whom you are as dear and 
pleasant as you were to your father. 

TO THE SAME. 

It was not owing to any want of attention to your wishes that 
Rupa did not execute your commission ; but neither myself 
nor the rest of your friends thought it advisable to adopt 
any measures in your absence which would prevent you from 
taking up the matter untouched and entire upon your return 
hither. What I think upon this subject I will explain to you 
more fully at a future time, by letter ; or, that you may not 
come with your mind made up to resist my arguments, I will 
encounter your reasons face to face ; that, if I shall not suc- 
ceed in turning you over to my opinion, I shall at least leave 
my opinion recorded in your memory : so that if at any time 
you should, which, however, I hope you will not, have occa- 
sion to repent of your determination, my persuasion to the 
contrary may be remembered by you. But thus much I 
will now say, that such is the crisis which will meet you on 
your return, that, with the qualifications which have been 
furnished to you by nature, study, and fortune, you will more 
easily attain to the highest dignities of the state than by the 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 181 

largest sums lavished on spectacles. The power of giving 
these entertainments, which belongs rather to wealth than 
to virtue, attracts no admiration ; nor is there any one who 
does not begin to be wearied and satiated by their frequency. 
But I am doing the very thing I said I would avoid, by 
entering into the explanation of the grounds of my opinion. 
I will defer altogether, therefore, the consideration of this 
subject to the time of your arrival. In the meantime it is fit 
you should know that the highest expectations are formed 
concerning you, and that those things are looked for from 
you which are to be expected from the loftiest virtue and 
most consummate ability. For which things if you are pre- 
pared, as you ought to be, and I trust you are, you will make 
the most valuable presents to us your friends, to all your 
countrymen, and to the republic itself. Be assured of this, 
that there is not any one dearer to me than yourself, or in 
whose society I feel greater enjoyment. 

TO THE SAME. 

Epistles are, as you know, of various kinds. But the most 
obvious and direct purpose of letter-writing and that which 
gave birth to it, was to inform our absent friends of those 
matters which it might be for our or their interest that they 
should be made acquainted with. You must not, however, 
expect any letter of this kind from me ; for you have corres- 
pondents and messengers to inform you of all your family 
affairs, and there is nothing new to tell you concerning myself. 
There are two other species of letters which please me mightily 
— the familiar and jocose, and those which turn upon grave 
and moral topics. But which of these it would be least 
proper for me to use upon the present occasion it is difficult 
to say. Shall I use playfulness with you in my letters? No, 
truly ; for I should hardly think the man that could be mirth- 
ful in these times deserving of the title of citizen. Shall I 
write in a more serious strain ? But what can Cicero write 
in a serious strain to Curio, unless it be on the present state 
of the republic? and on this subject my situation is such that 



182 LETTERS OF CICERO 

I dare not commit my real sentiments to paper, and none 
other can I write. Since, then, no subject ia left to me on 
wjhich I can employ my pen, I must confine myself within the 
bounds of the topic on which I lay such frequent stress in 
our communications, and exhort you to pursue with ardour 
the path that leads to the summit of glory. A strong adver- 
sary awaits you in the extraordinary expectation your talents 
have excited, and that adversary can only be conquered in 
one way; which one way is this, by diligently cultivating 
those arts whereby the glory on which your mind is so bent 
is attainable. I might add much more to the same purpose, 
if I did not consider that there was enough in your own mind 
to direct your willing efforts to the same objects : and what 
I have now suggested has arisen not so much from a desire to 
inflame your zeal as to testify my affection. 



There is nothing in which the wretched inferiority of heathen 
ethics to the sublime morality of the gospel is more striking 
than in the topics resorted to for administering consolation to 
the afflicted. Neither Cicero nor Sulpicius have any better 
mitigation of sorrow to propose to the sufferer than what is 
borrowed from despair, or from the general allotment of 
humanity. Under bereavements of the most heart-rending 
kind, the letter of heathen consolation rarely finds a solace 
more ready at hand than the escape which death affords 
from impending ills, or the critical disorders of the time. The 
divine attributes of love and mercy, the hope of forgiveness, 
the rewards of patience, the fruits of penitence, and the 
comfort of prayer, though comprising but a small part of 
the resources of the christian in trouble, are supports far above 
the reach of the heathen when " evils compass him about/' 
and " his heart is disquieted within him." One blank and 
negative ground of consolation to those who were deprived by 
death of their kindred, unknown to Christianity, was furnished 
by the pestilent dogma maintained by many of the ancient 
moralists, which denied a future state of positive retribution 



TO HIS Fill ENDS. 183 

— a doctrine maintained as well by those who held the tem- 
porary as by those who believed in the eternal existence of 
the soul after the dissolution of the body. Both Cicero 8 and 
Seneca, though of different sects, agreed in their inclination 
to treat the notion of positive punishment after death as a 
poetical delusion : and Socrates himself carried the idea of 
punishment no further than to the exclusion from the habita- 
tions of the gods. In the letter of Cicero to his friend Titius, 
who had lost his son, we find this opinion; which removes from 
the moral government of mankind its most effectual sanction 
and security ; furnishing one of the main arguments for recon- 
ciling his friend to his late bereavement. 

CICERO TO TITIUS. 

Although among all your friends I am perhaps the least fit 
to offer consolation to you, being so large a sharer in your 
grief as to need consolation myself, yet as my sorrow falls a 
little below yours in degree, I have thought it inconsistent 
with the friendship that exists between us, and the interest I 
take in all that concerns you, to remain silent while I see you 
in such great affliction j and not to administer some little 
consolation to you, which may somewhat alleviate, though it 
may not cure your sorrow. 

There is no ground of consolation, which deserves to be 
more frequently in our thoughts, though none is more common, 
than that we ought to remember we are men, and as such 
born under a law which subjects our lives to all the various 
assaults of fortune ; and we cannot refuse to live under the 
condition which we are made subject to by our birth: nor 
ought we to repine at those events which it is out of our 
power by any counsel to avoid. By reflecting upon the mis- 
fortunes which have befallen others, we may perceive that 
there is nothing singular in our own exposure to them. But 
neither these nor any other arguments which are used by the 

6 See Tuscul. Disp. 1. 21. 30. Senec. Consol. ad Marc. 19. 



184 LETTERS OF CICERO 

wisest men to administer consolation, seem so calculated to 
effectuate their object as. the consideration of the present 
unhappy situation of our affairs, and the sad series of events 
which cloud the prospects of the republic. Such, indeed, is 
the state of things, that those are to be accounted the most 
fortunate who have never been parents ; and as to those who 
have lost their children, surely they must be considered as 
having much less to regret than those who have suffered such 
bereavement in a flourishing period of the republic, or in any 
period in which a republic can be said to exist. If the sense 
of your own personal loss is the main cause of your grief, it 
may be difficult perhaps to remove such a general motive to 
sorrow. But if your grief springs from your loving concern 
for those whose fate you deplore ; not to insist upon that of 
which I have very frequently read and heard, that there is no 
real calamity in death in which consciousness remains, it 
being rather an entrance into immortality, than the extinction 
of life; let us remember on the other hand that if no con- 
sciousness remains, there can be no misery where there is no 
sensibility. 

If you can by any means be persuaded to think that no 
real evil has happened to them whom you loved, your motive 
to sorrow will be greatly diminished. There will then remain 
only the regret which you feel on your own account ; and it 
would ill agree with the wisdom and gravity of character 
which you have from your earliest age exhibited, to support 
with impatience misfortunes which affect yourself personally, 
while they extend not to those whom you have tenderly loved : 
for you have always upon all occasions, both public and 
private, conducted yourself with so much fortitude, that you 
stand engaged to maintain a firm and constant equability. 
That which time, which wears out the keenest sorrow, is sure 
to bring, it is the part of a wise and prudent man to anticipate. 
For if there never was a woman, soft and tender as is that sex, 
to whose maternal anguish for her lost children the lapse of 
time did not put a period, surely it becomes us to do for our- 
selves what time would do for us, and not to wait for time to 
bring us the medicine which reason is capable of affording us. 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 185 

If I have been able in any way by this letter to impart 
relief to your mind, I shall in some measure have accom- 
plished my wish. If my endeavours shall not have so far 
succeeded, I shall at least have discharged the duty of a most 
attached and affectionate friend, which I wish you to be 
assured of my having always been, and of my determination 
so to continue. 



In the commerce of friendship an interchange of sentiments 
of the most agreeable and graceful character is presented in 
the two following letters between Cicero and L. Lucceius, a 
man greatly distinguished by his urbanity and prudence in 
those days of political and moral disorder. It is highly cre- 
ditable to the character of Cicero, that it was a centre of 
attraction to all that the times afforded of moral excellence. 

L. LUCCEIUS TO CICERO. 

I shall rejoice to hear that you are well. As to my own 
health, it is much as usual, or rather, I think, somewhat 
worse. I have frequently called at your house in hopes of 
seeing you ; and am surprised to find that you have not been 
at Rome since Caesar left it. I do not well perceive what is 
your principal reason for withdrawing from hence. If any of 
your usual engagements of the literary kind make you thus 
enamoured of solitude, I am so far from blaming your resolu- 
tion, that I think of it with great pleasure. There is no sort 
of life which can be more agreeable, not only in these mourn- 
ful times, but in those in which we enjoy all the tranquillity 
we wish for : especially to a mind like yours, which now natu- 
rally seeks repose from great and wearisome occupations, and 
which is always capable of producing something that will 
afford pleasure to others, and honour to yourself. But if you 
have withdrawn yourself from the world, that you may give 
free vent to sadness and tears, as when you were here, I shall 
grieve because you grieve ; but, if you will allow me freely to 
impart my mind, I cannot excuse you. For let me ask how 



186 LETTERS OF CICERO 

does it happen, that you who can penetrate subjects the most 
abstruse, should in this instance be the only person unable to 
discern what is so obvious. Can you possibly be ignorant 
how unavailing are your unceasing complaints ; and how they 
serve only to double those inquietudes which your good sense 
calls upon you to subdue ? But if I cannot persuade you by 
arguments, I may, perhaps, by entreaties, and by earnestly 
requesting you, by the interest you take in obliging me, to 
shake off this gloom which hangs over you, and return to 
that society and to those occupations which were either 
common to us both, or peculiar to yourself. But though I 
would fain dissuade you from persisting in the course you 
seem to have marked out for yourself, I would by no means 
be troublesome. Since I move between two contraries; — on 
the one hand the hope that you will comply with my request, 
on the other that, if you cannot comply, you will not take 
amiss my interference. " 

CICERO TO L. LUCCEIUS. 

Your affection for me breathes out in every part of the letter 
which I have just received from you. Which feeling towards 
me, though not new to me, was nevertheless not the less 
agreeable and welcome : I should say it gave me pleasure, if 
that were not a word of which I have taken my leave for 
ever. Not merely, however, for the cause you suspect, and 
for which, in the gentlest and most affectionate terms, you do 
in fact severely reprove me, but because all that could supply 
a remedy for my wounded spirits is no more in being. What 
then is my resource ? Shall I seek refuge among my friends ? 
How many remain ? We once possessed our friends in com- 
mon, of whom some have perished, and others have become, 
how I know not, insensible to the evils which surround us. 
Your society, indeed, I might enjoy; and to enjoy it would 
be the principal wish of my heart. Long intercourse, affection, 
habit, similarity of studies, in short, what link is wanting to 
unite us in the closest intimacy? If, then, this is so, I do 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 187 

not understand what it is that keeps us asunder. How it has 
happened I know not, but certain it is that we saw little 
of each other when we were neighbours at Tusculum and 
Puteolse. I say nothing of our residence in Rome, in which, 
as the forum was the common resort, neighbourhood is not 
required to bring people together. 

I know not by what ill fate it has happened that I am 
thrown on these evil times; so that, when I might have expected 
to flourish in the greatest credit and dignity, I should, on the 
contrary, be ashamed to be in existence. Despoiled of every 
honour and every comfort that advanced my public or solaced 
my private life, what is it that can afford me any refuge? 
Books are, to be sure, a resource, and to this, indeed, I do 
assiduously apply. Yet even these seem to exclude me from 
the peaceful harbour of rest 1 would fain arrive at, and their 
contents appear to reproach me for remaining in a life which 
is nothing but the prolongation of a period of trouble and 
affliction. 

Can you be surprized, then, that I absent myself from 
Rome, when there is nothing under my own roof to afford me 
any satisfaction, and public affairs, public men, the forum, 
and the senate are all equally distasteful. I resort, therefore, 
to letters, in which, indeed, I consume my whole time, not as 
seeking from them a permanent cure of my misfortunes, but 
that I may obtain from them a respite from the sad remem- 
brance of them. But if you and I had acted as we should 
have done, had not our constant inquietudes put it out of our 
minds, we should have passed all our time together; nor 
would your infirm health, or my grief, have stood in our way. 
Let us, then, bring about this happy state as far as it may 
be possible ; for what can be more suitable to both of us than 
the company of each other ? I shall, therefore, be with you 
in a few days. 



The letters of Cicero to Servius Sujpicius, Lucius Lucceius, 
and others of his graver friends, have an uniform character of 



188 LETTERS OF CICERO 

despondency imparted to them by the perilous course of public 
events ; but to Papirius Pcetus, an epicurean of illustrious 
descent, and distinguished by his wit and humour, Cicero's 
letters are in a style of familiar gaiety and freedom, which 
shew what he means by the urbanitatis lepos, on which, in his 
lectures on the arts of oratory and composition, he appears to 
have set so high a value. 



CICERO TO PAPIRIUS PCETUS. 

I received a double gratification from your letter; it made 
me laugh, and shewed me that you are again capable of 
laughing yourself. Nor do I take it amiss that you should 
thus retort upon me the raillery of which I have so often 
made you the subject. I am very sorry not to have been 
able to travel your way, as I had intended, for my purpose 
was not merely to have come as your guest, but to have 
taken up my regular quarters with you. But what an altered 
man you would have found me ! not the man whose stomach 
you were accustomed to quiet with your cloying delicacies 9 
before our regular meals, but one who will set himself to 
work in good earnest, with an unbroken appetite, and go 
right through with his task, from the egg to the roast veal. 10 
Those my old habits of temperance, which you were wont 
to praise so much, and which made you extol me as a person 
so easy to entertain, are all laid aside : for I have done with 
all cares about the republic, and all ambition to make a 
figure in the senate, and have gone over fairly to the camp 
of my old adversaries the epicureans. Not that I am yet 
become a convert to that profusion and excess to which our 

9 These delicacies were set before the guests preparatory to the principal 
entertainment, and were given as provocatives to appetite. But it would 
appear from Cicero's raillery that they were sometimes of a nature to damp 
rather than excite the stomach. 

10 The first dish at the table of the Romans seems usually to have been 
eggs. See Hor. Sat. ii. 2 : and their feasts were generally concluded with 
roast or broiled meat. 



TO HIS FKIENDS. 189 

entertainments are now carried, but to that tasteful luxury 
which you used to exhibit when you could better afford it, 
though you never owned more farms than you do at present. 
You must be prepared to receive one who brings a good 
appetite with him, and some understanding of what good fare 
is. Men who become late proficients in any art, are, you 
know, apt to presume upon their knowledge. I will have 
none of your cakes and confectionary, they must be quite 
discarded. I am become such a proficient in this art, that I 
venture to invite to my table Verrius and Camillus, those 
delicate and refined friends of yours. I have even given a 
supper to Hirtius, though without a peacock ; for, to speak 
the truth, my cook had not skill enough to imitate any 
part of his luxurious entertainments except his soup. But 
to give you a sketch of my present mode of life. I begin the 
morning with receiving the compliments of many good but 
dispirited men, as well as those who rejoice in their victory, 
and which latter treat me with every mark of attention and 
regard. When these ceremonies are over, I shut myself up 
with my books and my pen. Even here I am sometimes 
followed by an audience, who set me down for a learned man 
for no other reason than because I am a little less ignorant 
than they; after this the ease and recreation of my body com- 
pletes the day. I have given to my country all she can claim 
of me. I have mourned for her more bitterly and more 
durably than a mother for her only son. 

If you love me, take care of your health, lest I take advan- 
tage of your illness, and come and devour your larder ; for I 
have resolved not to be moved by your state, sick as you 
may be, to shew you any mercy. 



Of the recommendatory kind, perhaps, a better example is 
hardly to be found than that of Cicero to his elegant friend 
Sulpicius, in behalf of Manius Curius, who was then exer- 
cising in Greece the peaceable occupation of a merchant, 
after having been one of the city quaestors in the year 691, 



190 LETTERS OF CICERO 

and having a few years afterwards filled the office of tribune. 
His ambition carried him no further in this tumultuous and 
dangerous career ; and in the predicament in which public 
affairs then stood, he judged it more prudent and profitable to 
withdraw from all personal connexion with them. He appears 
to have been a man of cultivated taste and studious habits, 
assuming the profession of a merchant more for the oppor- 
tunities it afforded him of improving his acquaintance with 
men and things than for objects of gain or accumulation. 

CICERO TO S. SULPICIUS. 

Manius Curius, who is now a merchant at Patrae, is a 
person, for many reasons, much esteemed by me ; our friend- 
ship is of very long standing; it began, indeed, with his first 
appearance in the forum. On many occasions, formerly, and 
now again, especially during this most unhappy civil war, his 
house, with all its hospitalities, has been open to me ; which, 
if I had wanted it, I might have used as my own. But the 
greatest tie that binds me to him, which is almost of a sacred 
kind, is his close intimacy with my friend Atticus, whom he 
values and loves above all others. Possibly you may be 
already acquainted with Curius, and, if so, my recommendation 
must, I think, come rather too late, for he must have recom- 
mended himself to you by his polite attentions and elegant 
manners. If such be the case, then I earnestly request that 
the sentiments you already entertain towards him may be con- 
firmed and increased by the recommendation of this letter. 
But if his diffidence have kept him from your acquaintance, 
or his merits have not yet become sufficiently known to you, 
or for any other reason a farther introduction maybe required, 
I beg: to add that there is no one whom I could venture to 
commend to your regard with greater zeal and confidence. I 
will also pledge myself, as every one who sincerely and dis- 
interestedly recommends another ought to do, that you will 
upon farther acquaintance find in Curius that good breeding, 
probity, and cultivation of mind which will prove him to be 
worthy of your friendship, and strictly entitled to all I say of 



TO HIS FIUENDS. 19 1 

him. To me, certainly, it will be a very sensible gratification 
if my letter shall have that influence with you which., in 
writing it, I confidently expected. 



The letter of Cicero to Curius upon his retirement to Patrse 
is, in a high degree, pleasing and interesting, and gives reason 
to think that the most agreeable properties of this great man's 
mind would have shone forth more abundantly in his epistolary 
correspondence, had he been less a sharer in the troubles of 
his country and the struggles of contending ambition. 

TO M. CURIUS. 

I remember when you seemed to me to have done very 
unwisely in choosing to live with foreigners, rather than with 
us your fellow-citizens. I naturally thought that a residence 
in Rome, while it was Rome, suited better your parts and 
breeding than, I will not say Patrse, but than any city that can 
be named of the whole Peloponessus. But now, on the con- 
trary, I consider your retirement into Greece, in this desperate 
crisis of our affairs, as a proof of your sound judgment and 
forecast, and that you have consulted your happiness in thus 
absenting yourself; if it is. possible for any one in these times 
to be happy who possesses any sensibility. But what you 
have obtained by removing to another scene, which you 
had the power of doing, I contrive to accomplish by another 
method. As soon as I have received the complimentary visits 
of my friends, which are now more frequent than they were 
wont to be, for they come to look upon a man who feels as a 
patriot as they would come to see a very uncommon sight, I 
shut myself up in my library, and there I occupy myself in 
the composition of those performances which are such as you 
find them; and I conclude them to be favourably thought of 
by you, for I heard you once, at your own house, when you 
were reproaching me for my dejection and despondency, 
remark, that the fortitude which my writings recommended 
was not found in my practice. But, in truth, I mourned 



192 LETTERS OF CICERO 

over the lost republic, which had been endeared to me not 
only by the honours it had bestowed upon me, but by the 
benefits which it had derived from my services : and now, 
when not only reason, which ought to have the greatest influ- 
ence, but time, which usually heals the weakest minds under 
affliction, have each brought their balm to my wounded 
spirit, I cannot but continue to lament to see this great com- 
munity falling to pieces without any prospect of better times. 
Nor, indeed, does the fault rest with him who has all in his 
power (unless, indeed, that the power itself is what it ought 
not to be) ; but our misfortunes and our follies have had so 
large a share in all that has happened, that we have hardly a 
right to complain. Be this as it may, I see no hope of any 
improvement ; wherefore I will conclude as I began, with 
commending your retirement from such a scene as a proof of 
your wisdom, if it was the result of consideration ; of your 
good fortune, if it was owing to chance. 



A letter from Cicero to Poetus shews the importance attached 
by Cicero to the cultivation of letter-writing as a branch of 
polite literature. 

CICERO TO PAPIR1US PCETUS. 

What is it you say? Do you call it madness to attempt to 
imitate the thunder, as you term it, of my eloquence? You 
might, indeed, have properly so said if you had failed in the 
attempt. But since you have excelled your model, mine is 
the disgrace, not yours. What you quote, therefore, from one 
of Trabea's comedies, as applying to yourself, is by no means 
so ; the failure is really mine, who fall so far short of my own 
aims. 

But tell me what sort of figure do I make as a letter- 
writer. Do I not correspond in a style quite popular and 
familiar? Not, indeed, always in the same style, for epis- 
tolary composition is of a character very unlike that of the 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 193 

bar or the senate ; though in judicial matters we are not 
accustomed to vary our modes of expression. In those, for 
example, in which private interests and those of little moment 
are concerned, we consult accuracy rather than elegance ; 
where, indeed, the reputation or life of a client is in question, 
we use a nobler and more polished manner. But I always 
accustom myself to write my letters in the language of con- 
versation. 



Among the shining men of this period few acquired greater 
distinction by their literary attainments than Trebonius, or 
seemed to possess a higher epistolary talent. He had the 
reputation of being a man of great integrity and humanity ; 
deriving his descent from a plebeian stock, but full of the 
sternest characteristics of the old Roman patriotism. To the 
enthusiasm with which he entertained these sentiments is 
to be ascribed his participation in the conspiracy against 
the life of his friend and patron, Julius Caesar: and as the 
crime of this cruel assassination was aggravated in Trebonius 
by the stain of ingratitude, he was the first on whom the 
act was visited by the destruction of the perpetrator. After 
Caesar's death, Trebonius made haste to repair to the pro- 
vince of Asia which had been assigned to him before that 
event, and fixed his residence at Smyrna. Here he was 
surprized and captured by Dolabella, who, after keeping him 
two days under torture, to extort from him the discovery of 
all the money in his possession, caused his head to be cut off 
and carried about on a spear. 

The letter of Trebonius to Cicero, in commendation of his 
son, was one of three received by the father about the same 
time, of which it is hard to say which was conceived in 
terms of the greatest elegance. The letter from Trebonius is 
dated from Athens; and it is here inserted to introduce the 
son of Cicero to the reader's notice. 



194 LETTERS OF CICERO 



TREBONIUS TO CICERO. 



I came hither on the 21st of May, where, to my great con- 
tentment, I saw your son devoted to objects most worthy of 
his pursuit, and in the highest credit for the propriety of his 
conduct. Of the delight which this circumstance affords me, 
you know me too well to need any assurance from me : for 
you well know how dear you are to me, and how by the long 
and sincere friendship which has existed between us, I am 
made to rejoice in the smallest advantage which attends you, 
much more in a matter so important to your happiness. Do 
not imagine, my dear Cicero, that these are mere words, used 
only to please you. The truth is, there is nobody more 
beloved among all the youths now at Athens than this young 
man, whom, because he is yours, I call also mine, for I can 
separate myself from nothing that concerns or affects you ; 
nor is any one here more studious of all those arts which you 
most delight in, that is, of the best. I congratulate you, 
therefore, very heartily, and with great sincerity, and myself 
no less, that he whom we must needs have loved from a sort 
of necessity, proves to be just such a one as we should love 
from choice. 

As he threw out in conversation that he wished to visit 
Asia, I invited and entreated him to come there while I pre- 
sided over that province. And you cannot doubt of my filling 
your office in every paternal tenderness towards him. It shall 
be my care that Cratippus u shall be constantly with him, so 
that you need not be afraid of his neglecting those studies to 
which, I know, he is continually animated by your exhor- 
tations; nor shall he want any encouragements from me to 
push forwards his steps daily in those attainments of learn- 
ing into which he has entered with so resolute a beginning. 



Brutus and Lentulus, in letters to the elder Cicero, bear 
the same testimony to the good conduct and high qualities of 

11 One of the most celebrated philosophers of the Peripatetic sect. 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 195 

the son. It appears, too, that the son's own letters were, in. 
the opinion of his father, written in terms the most affection- 
ate and dutiful, and expressed with great grace and propriety. 
There are only two letters of this young man extant, but these 
being written to Tiro, the freedman and faithful friend of his 
father, and, as may be supposed, without effort or dissimula- 
tion, are fair specimens of his habits of thinking and feeling. 

CICERO THE SON TO TIRO. 12 

While I was in daily and earnest expectation of your mes- 
sengers from Rome, they came at last on the forty-sixth day 
after they left you. Their arrival was most welcome to 
me ; for my father's most indulgent and affectionate letter 
gave me abundant joy ; which was greatly added to by the 
receipt also of yours ; so that, instead of regretting my omis- 
sion to write to you, I was rather pleased that my silence had 
occasioned me to receive so particular a proof of your kind 
consideration. It gave me great pleasure to find you so ready 
to accept my apology. I do not doubt, my dearest Tiro, that 
the reports which reach you concerning me, are such as give 
you real satisfaction. It shall be my care and endeavour that 
this growing good opinion of me shall come every day more 
and more confirmed to you. And since you promise to be the 
herald of my praises, you may, I trust, venture to be so with 
confidence; for the past errors of my youth have mortified me 
so sensibly, that my mind does not only abhor the errors I 
have committed, but my ears cannot endure the mention of 
them. I am perfectly assured that you have shared in these 
feelings of regret and sorrow for the past ; and it is no wonder 
you should ; for though you wish me all success for my sake, 
you are also interested in it for your own, for it has always 
been my wish that you should be a partner in all the good 
that may befal me. As I have, therefore, been formerly the 
occasion of grief to you, so it shall be my object in future to 
double your joy on my account. 

12 Tironi Suo dulcissimo S. P. D. 



196 LETTERS OF CICERO 

You must know that I live in the greatest intimacy with 
Cratippus, — rather as his son than his pupil. I not only 
hear his lectures with pleasure, but am charmed with his 
conversation. I pass whole days w 7 ith him, and frequently 
also a part of the night ; for I prevail with him as often 
as I can to sup with me ; and in our familiar chat, as we 
sit at table, the night steals upon us without our thinking 
of it, while he lays aside the severity of his philosophy, 
and jokes amongst us with all the good humour imagin- 
able. Contrive, therefore, to come to us as soon as possible, 
and see this agreeable and excellent man. Why need I tell 
you of Bruttius, whom I never part with out of my sight? 
His life is regular and exemplary, and his company the most 
entertaining. He has the habit of introducing questions of 
literature into conversation, and of seasoning philosophy with 
pleasantry. I have hired a lodging for him in the next house 
to me, and support his slender means as far as I am able out 
of my narrow income. I have begun also to declaim in Greek 
under Cassius, but I like to exercise myself in Latin under 
Bruttius. I live also in great familiarity with, and in the con- 
stant company of those whom Cratippus brought with him 
from Mitylene : men of learning, and highly esteemed by 
him. Epicrates, also, the leading man at Athens, and Leonidas 
spend much of their time with me ; and many others of the 
same rank. This is the manner of my life at present. As to 
what you write about Gorgias, he was serviceable to me in 
my daily oratorical exercises, but I sacrificed all these consi- 
derations to the duty of obeying my father, who wrote pe- 
remptorily that I should dismiss him immediately. I com- 
plied, therefore, without hesitation, lest by my reluctance 
I might raise in him some suspicion to my disadvantage. 
Besides, I was touched with the reflection that it would be 
very unbecoming in me to deliberate on my father's judgment. 
Your zeal and your advice are very acceptable to me. I ad- 
mit your excuse of want of leisure, for I know how much your 
time is taken up. I am greatly delighted with your having 
purchased a farm ; and I beg most heartily to wish you joy 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 197 

of it. Do not wonder at my congratulations coming in this 
place, for it was in the same part of your letter to me that you 
informed me of your purchase. You have now a place where 
you may drop all the forms of the city, and are become a 
Roman of the old rustic stamp. I please myself with placing 
your figure before my eyes, and imagining I see you bartering 
for your country wares, or consulting with your bailiff, or carry- 
ing- from vour table in the corner of your vest the seeds of your 
fruits for your garden. But to be serious : I am as much con- 
cerned as you are that I happened to be out of the way, and 
could not assist you upon that occasion. But depend upon it, 
my dear Tiro, I will make you easy, if fortune does not disap- 
point me, especially as I know you have bought this farm for 
the common use of us both. I am obliged to you for your care 
in executing my orders, but beg of you that a librarian may be 
sent to me in all haste, and especially a Greek one; for I 
waste much of my time in transcribing the lectures and books 
that are of use to me. Above all things take care of your 
health, that we may live to carry on our literary enquiries 
and studies together (avfityiXoKoyuv). I recommend Anthe- 
rus to you. Farewell. 



The letters of Cicero to his friend Atticus, though replete 
with intelligence, comment, and instruction, respecting all 
the great transactions of the Roman world during a most im- 
portant and eventful period of its history, and an excellent 
key to the politics of a most critical juncture of human af- 
fairs, were yet less elegant and agreeable as specimens of a 
graceful correspondence by letter, than those which were 
given to the world under the title of Familiar Letters. The 
letters to Atticus were for the most part written under the influ- 
ence of such inquietude of spirits, with such a timid and dis- 
trustful view of the events and characters by which the writer 
was surrounded, and with such an aching sense of mortified 
vanity and defeated aspirations, that his genius could not 
move with the freedom and alacrity which was required for 



198 LETTERS OF CICEllO 

its due expansion — a disadvantage not a little increased by 
the intimations and allusions in which Cicero obscurely lets 
out his meaning, in communicating with his friend on public 
events and characters ; and by the want of Atticus's part in 
the correspondence. 

But nothing could escape from the hand of Cicero without 
the impress of his genius ; and among his epistles to Atticus 
there are some very interesting and striking. One or two it 
may be proper to produce as examples. In the 10th Epistle, 
lib. ix. the drooping courage of Pompey under the dominant 
ascendancy of Caesar's star, the want of a prepared and de- 
cided mind in Cicero under his embarrassments, his consci- 
entious adherence to Pompey, his secret admiration of Caesar^ 
his doubts and mental conflicts under the new aspect of pub- 
lic affairs, and his generous sympathy with the fortunes of his 
agitated country, are displayed in lively colours. 

CICERO TO ATTICUS. 

I had really nothing to write to you when I took up my pen 
for the purpose. But as my anxiety and depression of spirits 
not only deprive me of sleep, but will not allow me any res- 
pite from pain when I am awake, I have set myself down to 
write something I know not what; that I may seem to be 
chatting with you, in whom alone I find comfort ; without 
proposing to myself any subject or argument. I seem to 
have been all along bereaved of my understanding ; and this 
one consideration continually torments me, that I did not, as a 
soldier his standard, follow Pompey, tottering as he is, or 
rather rushing to his destruction. I saw the man on the 11th 
of January under the greatest consternation, when I plainly 
perceived what he was about to do. Since then I have seen 
nothing to approve in him. His conduct has exhibited only 
a succession of blunders. In the meantime he has held no 
intercourse with me by letter. Nothing but how to fly has 
been the subject of his thoughts. Do you wish me to ex- 
plain my own conduct? To tell you the truth, then, as in 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 199 

what belongs to courtship, indelicate, stupid, and malignant 
persons create in us an aversion, so the disgraceful aspect of 
this man's flight, and his neglect of what it became him to 
do, made me cease to love him. Not one thing worthy of 
himself did he do, to induce me to accompany him in his 
flight. But now again my love resumes its place, and I am 
unable to support his absence. Books do nothing towards 
amusing me — literary occupations nothing — philosophy no- 
thing. Night and day my heart flutters like a bird ; and to 
fly away over the sea that lies before me is all my desire. I 
do, I do indeed undergo the punishment due to my temerity. 
And yet where was my temerity? What I did, was it not 
done upon mature consideration ? 

Had flight been the only question, I would unhesitatingly 
have followed him. But I reflected with horror on it as the 
prelude of a most cruel war, of which no man could calculate 
the result. What menaces were thrown out against the mu- 
nicipal towns, and against some of our virtuous citizens by 
name — in fine, against all who staid behind ? How often was 
this saying in his mouth, ' Sylla could do so ; cannot I do so 
likewise?' These things took fast hold of my thoughts. 

Wickedly indeed did Tarquin act in arming Porsenna 
against his country ; impious was the conduct of Coriolanus 
in calling for assistance from the Volsci. It was praiseworthy 
in Themistocles to die rather than carry arms against his 
country; while Hippias, the son of Pisistratus, who fell at 
the battle of Marathon, in arms against his country, acted a 
villanous part. But Sylla, Marius, and Cinna, acted under 
great provocation, perhaps with some colour of justice ; and 
yet what could be more cruel or fatal than were their vic- 
tories ? 

I was very anxious to avoid the recurrence of a warfare of 
the same kind ; and the more so because I saw that more 
cruel measures were contemplated, and already in prepara- 
tion ; and that I, whom some have called the preserver and 
parent of the city, might be employed in leading against it 
troops of Goths, Armenians, and Colchians ; — that I should 



200 LETTERS OF CICERO 

be an instrument to bring famine upon my countrymen, and 
desolation upon Italy. I first thought within myself that 
Pompey was but mortal, and that his death might be occa- 
sioned by many accidents, while it was our duty to do all we 
could that our city and country should be immortal. And 
still a remnant of hope suggested to me that something in the 
shape of a convention might be brought about before Caesar 
should so far proceed in treason, or Pompey in blood. The 
state of things is now totally changed, and so are my expec- 
tations. The sun, to borrow your expression in one of your 
letters, seems, as to myself, to have fallen out of the system of 
the world. As it is said that while there is life in the sick 
there is hope, so, as long as Pompey was in Italy I did not 
despair. These hopes, these only hopes, have deceived me ; 
and, to speak the truth, my age, worn down by incessant 
labours, and driven to seek repose, turns with fond desire 
to the solace of domestic life. Now, as matters stand, the 
danger must be hazarded, and hazarded it shall be, that I 
may fly hence. Perhaps it should have been done before. 
But the things I wrote to you about, and chiefly your opinion, 
stood in my way. For as soon as I arrived here, I opened a 
parcel of your letters which I have under seal, and preserve 
with the greatest care. Now in that which you wrote to me 
on the 23d of January, you thus express yourself: — " Let us 
see how Pompey will proceed, and what are his views. Should 
he leave Italy, he will act wrongly, and in my opinion ab- 
surdly (aXoyicTTijjg). If he should take this course, our plans 
must be changed." It is thus you write on the fourth day 
after my leaving the city. Afterwards, on the 25th of January, 
you write to me thus : — " Provided our friend Pompey does 
not leave Italy as he has absurdly (aXoytcrrwc) abandoned 
Rome." In another letter of the same date, you give a posi- 
tive answer to my application for your advice. Your words 
are : — " But I come to the matter on which you ask my ad- 
vice. If Pompey should leave Italy, I think you should re- 
turn to Rome ; for if you follow him, where will end your 
foreign travelling?" This opinion of yours, 1 must plainly 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 201 

confess, made a great impression upon me. And now I see 
that my flight will involve me in an endless conflict, — a 
flight which, in your soft mode of phrasing it, you call (vtto. 
KopiZr}) " foreign travelling." Then follows your oracular 
opinion (xprjayzoc), which was dated on the 27th of January, 
to this effect : — " Should Pompey remain in Italy, and there 
should be no accommodation, the war would, I think, be long 
protracted. But should he abandon Italy, I fear the founda- 
tion would be laid of a war, of which the consequences would 
extend to posterity. 1 ' Such then is the war with which I am 
compelled to be actively associated — one that can never be 
made up (cktttovSov), waged against one's own countrymen. — 
Afterwards, on the 7th of February, when you had seen fur- 
ther into Pompey's views, you conclude your letter in these 
terms : — " I would not counsel you to leave Italy, and to fol- 
low Pompey in his flight. For by so doing you will incur 
the greatest danger to yourself, without substantially serving 
the republic, to which, if you stay where you are, you may- 
hereafter be of service." Now, where is the lover of his coun- 
try, or man of public spirit, whom such advice, coming from 
so sage a friend, and with such a weight of authority, would 
not influence. Afterwards, on the 1 1th of February, on my 
asking again for your advice, you write as follows : — " You ask 
me whether I think your flight, by which you keep your faith 
with Pompey, or your stay, by which you desert the patriotic 
side, is the more advisable ? To which I answer notwithstand- 
ing, that in the present posture of things 1 think your sudden 
and precipitate departure would be of no service to Pompey, 
and hazardous to yourself. And I think it on the whole better 
that you and your party should disperse yourselves for a 
while, and watch the progress of events. But, indeed, I do 
think it disgraceful. at this moment to think of flying." And 
yet this disgraceful act our friend Pompey has for these two 
years past been meditating. So has his mind been tending 
for a long time towards the imitation of Sylla and his pro- 
scriptions. (" Ita Sullaturit animus ejus, ei proscripturit 
diu.") After this, if I rightly remember, when you wrote to 



202 LETTERS OP CICERO 

me in more general terms, and I thought I could gather from 
your expressions something like a desire that I should leave 
Italy, you shew your detestation of such a step in more decisive 
language. On the 19th of February you write thus : — " I have 
in no letter intimated an opinion that if Pompey should leave 
Italy, you should leave it likewise. Or, if I have furnished 
ground for such a construction of my words, I do not merely say 
I have been inconsistent with myself, but positively insane." 
In another passage of the same letter you say, " Nothing is now 
left to Pompey but flight, in which I by no means think that 
you ought to accompany him; nor have I ever so thought." 
But you discuss all the difficulties which can occur on this 
subject more accurately in your letter of the 22d of February : 
— " If Manius Lepidus and Lucius Volcatius should stay, I 
think you ought to stay likewise. But if Pompey can be 
preserved, and can make a stand somewhere, I think you may 
leave this inanimate mass (vekviclv) around you, and rather sub- 
mit to be defeated together with him in this contest, than reign 
with Csesar in the midst of that despicable throng by which 
we must then expect to be surrounded." After many observa- 
tions to the same effect, towards the end of your letter you 
say : — " But if Lepidus and Volcatius should leave Italy, I 
am at a loss what to advise (plane cnropw). But in any event 
you must be firm in adhering to the course of action you have 
adopted." If then you were in doubt what advice to give, 
you certainly cannot hesitate now, as these persons remain in 
Italy. 

After this, on the 25th of February, when Pompey was ac- 
tually flying, you say : — " In the meantime, you will, I doubt 
not, remain at Formise. There you can most conveniently 
hear what happens." On the 1st of March, five days after 
Pompey was gone to Brundusium, you write : — " Then we 
can deliberate, not indeed as if you stood quite unengaged in 
this affair, but with a choice more open and entire than would 
have been the case had you precipitately cast yourself upon 
Pompey." Your next was on the 4th of March, when, being 
under an attack of the ague (vtto tt\v \r\^iv), you were obliged 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 203 

to write very briefly: you yet state your opinion thus : — "To- 
morrow I will write more fully, and upon all matters. Thus 
much, however, I will now say, that I do not repent of having 
advised you to stay in Italy. And though it is not possible 
not to regard the question with great anxiety, nevertheless be- 
cause I think there is less evil in staying than in going away, 
I hold to my first opinion, and rejoice that you have re- 
mained where you are." Afterwards, w r hen I was in great 
fear and alarm lest I had done any thing to injure my cha- 
racter, you write to me on the 5th of March : — " And yet I 
am not at all uneasy at your not being with Pompey. If it 
should be hereafter necessary, it will not be difficult to join 
him; and join him when you will, your coming will be wel- 
comed by him with joy. But what I say in this respect 
must be understood with some limitation. For should Caesar 
go on as he has begun, sincerely, temperately, and prudently, 
I should look far into consequences, and consider well what 
course it would be most advantageous to take." 

On the 9th of March, you write that my remaining inactive 
is much approved of by our friend Peduceus, whose opinion 
has great weight with me. I am consoled by the assurance 
which all these your letters give me, that I have hitherto 
done nothing to disgrace myself. It will be for you to defend 
your own opinion ; with me there is no necessity for any 
such defence ; but I am desirous that others may be made 
sensible of its rectitude. As to myself, if I have not hitherto 
acted blameably, I will take care of what is to come. En- 
courage me to persevere in this conduct, and assist me with 
your thoughts on every part of it. Nothing has reached us 
here respecting Ceesar's return. In writing this letter my 
great advantage has been, that it has occasioned me to read 
again all those I have received from you. 

TO THE SAME. 

You see what comfort there is in our being neighbours; surely 
then I shall do well to conclude the purchase of the villa in 



204 LETTERS OF CICERO 

question. When I was at Tusculanum, our interchange of 
letters was so frequent that we seemed to be talking together. 
And this state of things shall be renewed. I have in the mean- 
time, as you advised me, finished the treatises addressed to 
Varro. I am expecting, however, some answer from you as 
to the matters I wrote to you about. In the first place, how 
came you to be informed that a man who like Varro has 
written so much, (iroXvypacpuTaTog,) without addressing any- 
thing to me, should look for such a compliment at my hands. 
Then of whom can he be jealous, unless it be of Brutus. 
And if not of him, far less can he be jealous of Hortensius, 
or any of those who are made to speak in my treatise con- 
cerning the republic. I would wish you to be explicit with 
me on the following point; — whether you remain in your 
opinion, that I should send my work to Varro, or cease to 
think it necessary. But of this when we meet. 

TO THE SAME. 

My secretary Hilarus had just gone from hence on the 27th, 
with a letter for you, w T hen your letter-carrier came with your 
letters dated the day before, which brought me the gratifying 
news that your daughter, our Attica, desired you not to be un- 
easy, and your own opinion that she is out of danger (aiavSvva). 
The authority of your approbation has given great lustre to 
my speech for Ligarius. Balbus and Oppius write to me 
that they are wonderfully pleased with it ; and, humble as it 
is, have sent it to Ceesar. You, indeed, had written to me 
before to the same effect. As to Varro, I care not for the 
suspicion that I am making him the instrument of extending 
my own fame. I had determined to include no living cha- 
racters in my dialogues ; but because you tell me that the 
thing is desired by Varro, and that it is a great object w 7 ith 
him, I have finished the dialogues accordingly. I have com- 
prehended the whole Academic system in four books. How 
well it has been executed I pretend not to say ; but as to the 
statement of the points in argument, nothing can be more accu- 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 205 

rate. I have in these books put into the mouth of Varro, all 
that has been so remarkably well collected by Antiochus against 
the doctrine of universal uncertainty in human knowledge. 
These I answer myself, and you are the third party in our con- 
versation. Had I brought in Cotta and Varro disputing to- 
gether as you advised me in your last, I must then have been 
a silent character. When persons venerable by their age and 
knowledge are introduced as speakers, the effect is very pleas- 
ing : as has been done by Heraclides in many of his dialogues, 
and by myself in my six books concerning government. My 
three books on the qualities of an orator are upon the same 
plan, and with this performance I feel well satisfied ; in which 
the persons speaking were such as necessarily made one silent. 
They were Crassus, Antonius, the elder Catulus, Caius Julius, 
the brother of Catulus, Cotta, and Sulpicius. When this 
dialogue is supposed to have taken place, I was but a boy, 
and therefore could not have any part in it assigned to me. 
In what I have composed for present times, in the manner of 
Aristotle, the speeches of the others are so disposed as to 
make myself the principal. Thus in my work concerning the 
ends of things, I have assigned the defence of the Epicurean 
doctrine to L. M. Torquatus, that of the Stoics to M. Cato, 
and that of the Peripatetics to M. Piso; all of whom I 
answer. This I thought I could do without giving any 
offence, as all the parties are dead. You are aware, that I 
had brought together Catulus, Lucullus, and Hortensius dis- 
puting in this academical conference. The topics, indeed, 
were not well suited to those characters ; for the subtleties 
which they are made to discuss were such as these persons 
could never have dreamed of. As soon, therefore, as I read 
your remarks concerning Varro, I laid hold of them as a sort 
of unexpected prize. Nothing could be better suited than 
his character to that species of philosophical enquiry, in 
which he has always taken a great interest ; and so powerful 
are the arguments which he brings to the subject, that I 
cannot think my own part in the debate has been better 
sustained; for the propositions of Antiochus are cast into a 



206 LETTERS OF CICERO 

very persuasive form ; and expressed with some care and 
pains by me; so that they combine the acuteness by which the 
method of Antiochus is distinguished with such graces of 
style, if I may take credit for any, as are belonging to myself. 
But whether you think these books may properly be inscribed 
to Varro, you will seriously consider. Some thoughts have 
occurred to me on that head. But of this matter when we 
meet. 

CICERO TO VARRO. 

Our friend Caninius has made your wishes known to me in 
your own words, — that I would write to you whenever I had 
anything to inform you of, which it was important you should 
know. That we are in expectation of Caesar's arrival, is what 
you know already. But you may like to know that having 
written to say, that it was his intention to land at Alsium, 
his friends wrote to him to dissuade him from so doing. They 
think that his landing at that place would prove troublesome to 
himself, and inconvenient to many others ; and have therefore 
recommended Ostia as a more convenient place for his dis- 
embarkation. For my part, I see no difference. Hirtius, 
however, tells me, that he, as well as Balbus and Oppius, 
(who, by the way, are all of them much in your interest,) 
have written to Caesar to the same effect. I was willing, 
therefore, that you should know this, that you might determine 
where to procure a lodging ; or might, if you thought it better, 
engage one in both these places, for it is uncertain at which 
of them he may disembark. Another motive with me for tell- 
ing you what I have heard from these persons, who are such 
favourites of Caesar, was to shew you how well I stand with 
them, and how well I am acquainted with their counsels. 
Nor do I see any reason for declining their friendship. For 
surely there is a difference between bearing what must be 
submitted to, and approving what ought to be condemned. 
Although, to say the truth, I do not know that there are any 
to be blamed except those who have been instrumental in 
giving birth to this civil war. This, indeed, was their volun- 



TO HIS FRTENDS. 207 

tary act. I saw what you did not, being absent from Rome 
at the time, that our friends were desirous of war, while of 
Caesar it could not so properly be said that he desired it, as 
that he was not afraid of it. The entering therefore upon the 
war was matter of purpose and design : what ensued upon it 
was matter of necessary consequence. It followed that one 
side or the other must prevail in the contest. 

I know that you, equally with myself, foresaw with grief 
the mischiefs which must ensue whichever of the generals of 
the contending armies should fall in the battle, for victory in 
a civil war crowns and consummates all its evils. I dreaded 
it even on that side to which you and I were attached ; for 
they threatened cruel vengeance on those who stood neuter : 
your sentiments and my speeches were alike distasteful to 
them. If they had obtained the victory we should have 
experienced the effects of their power, as their resentment 
exceeded all bounds ; as if we had taken any measures for 
our own security which we did not equally intend for their 
benefit; or as if they had done better for their country by 
having had recourse to Juba and his elephants than by 
dying at once in the held, or living with some hope, not the 
fairest perhaps, but still with some hope, under the present 
system. But they say we live in a time when the republic 
is in trouble and disorder. And who can deny this? But 
let this be the objection of those who have provided for 
themselves no resources to sustain them under all conditions 
of life: and to bring the subject to this point, I have been 
more diffuse than I at first intended. 

Now, as I have always seen something truly great in your 
character, so nothing raises that character higher in my esteem 
than to see you almost the only man in these tempestuous 
times settled in port, and enjoying the fruits of your studies ; 
which have been of the noblest kind ; and which, both for 
utility and delight, are to be preferred to all the achievements 
and the enjoyments in which others place their happiness. 

The days you pass at your Tusculan villa I consider to be 
worthy of being called life ; and most willingly would I relin- 



208 LETTERS OF CICERO 

quish to others all that is called prosperity, to be at liberty, 
without any interruption, to live in the same happy manner. 
I imitate your practice as far as circumstances will allow me, 
and cherish all opportunities of solacing myself with our 
favourite studies. For who would not concede to us the 
privilege, when our country either cannot or will not accept 
our services, of retiring to the sort of life to which I now 
allude ; when it is considered that many philosophic minds, 
not rightly perhaps, but whether rightly or wrongly, have 
thought this kind of life to be preferable to that which is 
occupied in public cares and the labours of the patriot. And 
why should we not take the advantage of this exemption from 
public duties, which our country concedes to us, for the pro- 
secution of those studies which, in the opinion of great men, 
are sufficient of themselves to dispense with the claims which 
our country has to our services. But I am going beyond the 
commission which Caninius gave me : for he only required of 
me to impart to you what I happened to know and you might 
not ; instead of which I am telling you what you already 
know better than myself. I will, therefore, in future, confine 
myself to the task of relating to you such passing occurrences 
as may come to my knowledge, and of which you ought not 
to be left in ignorance. 

CICERO TO VARRO. 

Although to press for the performance of a promised ser- 
vice is so little in accordance with good breeding, that even 
the vulgar are not accustomed to do it unless the case be an 
urgent one, I am, nevertheless, so interested in a certain pro- 
mise you have made me, that I cannot help reminding you of 
it, if I do not importune you for the performance of it. To this 
end I have sent you four admonitors, 13 such, perhaps, as you 
would call not very modest. You are well acquainted with 

13 The dialogues on the academical questions, which appear to have origi- 
nally consisted of four books, though only a part of one is now extant. 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 209 

the confident mien of the younger academy ; 14 and the admo- 
nitors I send you are from among the disciples of the later 
academy. I am apprehensive that you may consider them as 
importunate, though I commissioned them only as petitioners. 
To be plain with you, I have long forborne to address some 
of my works to you, in the expectation of receiving a compli- 
ment of the same kind from yourself, intending to requite the 
favour by a similar return. But as I consider your delay to 
arise from your anxiety to do it more efficaciously, I could no 
longer refrain from making known, in the best manner I was 
able, the union subsisting between us, both in our affections 
and our studies. 

To this end I have framed a discussion, which I suppose to 
have been carried on between you, myself, and Atticus, when 
Atticus was with us at your Cuman villa. The part I have 
given you in the dialogue is to defend, what I considered you 
as approving, the opinions of Antiochus. You will, I dare 
say, look upon it as somewhat odd that we shall be made to 
carry on a conversation together which, in truth, we never 
held together. But you know the nature and meaning of 
such compositions. 

Hereafter, my dear Varro, I trust we shall agree in the 
advantage it will brin^ to us to realize these conversations 
together : a little late in the day, perhaps, to determine upon 
this, but the troubled state of the times past must excuse our 
delay. The moment is now arrived when we are called upon 
to cultivate this intercourse ; and my heart's desire is, that in 
this more peaceful state of things, in which the city is in a 
settled, if not in a prosperous condition, we may be able to 
pursue in conjunction our enquiries and researches. Though, 
indeed, were this state to continue, reasons might recur for 
our entering again upon a scene of exertion and honourable 
cares. But in the actual state of things, what is there but 

14 The founder of the old academy was Plato ; of the later, Arcesilas. They 
differed chiefly as to the degree of evidence on which knowledge is founded. 
The old maintained that some propositions were certain ; the later, that none 
were more than probable. 

P 



210 LETTERS OF CICERO 

these studies for which one would wish to live ? For my own 
part, with these resources, I am hardly reconciled to life ; 
without them it would be insupportable. But of these matters 
we shall have frequent opportunities of conversing when we 
meet. In the meantime, I heartily wish the new habitation 
you have purchased may promote your comfort. I much 
approve what you have done. Take care of your health. 



It was towards the close of the year 707 u. c. that Julius 
Caesar set out on his expedition to Africa, to prosecute the 
war against Scipio and the other generals on whom, after 
Pompey's death, the cause of the republic had devolved ; and 
who, in alliance with King Juba, held possession of that pro- 
vince with a large and formidable army. During his absence, 
and while the fate of the empire hung in suspense upon the 
issue of this war, Cicero lived a retired life with his books, 
taking no part in public affairs. In this literary seclusion 
he entered into a close correspondence with M. Terentius 
Varro, and proposed a dedication of some of their works 
respectively to each other. Cicero inscribed his book on 
Academical Questions to Varro, and Varro his Treatise on the 
Latin Tongue to Cicero. 

Varro was born in the 637th year of Rome, and had served 
under Pompey, in whose piratical war he is said to have 
obtained a naval crown. His knowledge was so vast and 
various as to gain for him the title of the most learned of the 
Romans. A similarity in their habits and studies, and espe- 
cially in their opinions on subjects of literature and philoso- 
phy, associated Cicero and Varro in the bonds of a durable 
friendship. While Cicero was mourning over his country's mis- 
fortunes, he sought for consolation in proposing to his friend 
that they should live in the closest communication, philoso- 
phical and literary ; with an understanding that if their help 
should at any time be called for towards composing the dis- 
tractions of the state, they should run to assist, not only as 
architects, but as masons, to build up again the shattered re- 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 211 

public; or, if their efforts were rejected in such a service, 
they would endeavour to diffuse, by their studies and writings, 
an acquaintance with the best forms of government, and to 
benefit their country by composing treatises on morals, laws, 
and social duties. 15 

While Varro was engaged in this friendly correspondence 
with Cicero, he passed his time in elegant-amusements at one 
or other of his various villas, of which the principal was near 
the town of Cassinum, where was his valuable and numerous 
library. Being for some time on the list of Antony's pro- 
scriptions, he was secreted by his friends till an edict was 
passed by M. Plancus, consul, under the seal of the trium- 
virs, excepting him and Messala Corvinus from the meditated 
slaughter of all the best citizens. His favourite villa was, 
however, seized upon and plundered by the soldiers executing 
the orders of Antony, and his celebrated library, which stood 
in his garden, was rifled and dispersed. From the decisive 
affair at Actium to the time of his death, which happened in 
the year of the city 727, when he had reached his ninetieth 
year, Varro resided at Rome, under shelter of the imperial 
sway of Augustus, and to the last continuing his habits of 
study. His final effort in composition was his treatise on 
agriculture (De Re Rustica), which has been pronounced by a 
good authority to be rather the work of a fine scholar than of 
an adept in the art of which he treats. This work, and that 
which he composed on the Latin language, are all that remain 
of his various performances, except some few fragments which 
have been preserved. Of his philological work only a portion 
is now extant ; in addition to which a few fragments of a 
distinct treatise, De Sermone Latino, are found in Aulus Gel- 
lius. His critical works have left no memorial, and the same 
may be said of those which he produced on mythological and 
theological subjects. They are frequently referred to by the 
early fathers of the church, more particularly by Augustine 
and Lactantius, and said to have been extant as late as the 

15 Epist. ad. Fara. ix. 2. 



212 LETTERS OF CICERO 

beginning of the fourteenth century. It appears that in his 
philosophy he addicted himself to the opinions of the old 
academy. The numerous provinces of literature, science, and 
philosophy, over which the capacious mind of this extraordi- 
nary man extended, makes it matter of astonishment that so 
much of his existence was necessarily absorbed in military 
service ; but a certain dignity was thrown round the character 
of the great Romans of this period by the threefold aspect in 
which they stand before us, as military commanders, senators, 
and magistrates. In the service of Pompey, to whom Varro 
had been faithfully attached, two legions had been put under 
his command in Hispania ulterior, and after the defeat of his 
colleagues, Afranius and Petreius, in nether Spain, he was 
left to maintain an unequal war against Caesar in person. 
Part of his army deserted, and he was soon compelled with 
the residue to surrender to the conqueror, who, with his 
accustomed generosity, gave him his liberty. He proceeded to 
Dyrrachium to Pompey, but soon afterwards returned to Italy, 
and spent the remainder of his life in literary retirement. 

Julius Csesar returned to Rome about the end of September 
in the year 708 u. c. having terminated the war in Spain by 
his victory over the two sons of Pompey, and entertained the 
city with the most splendid triumph which Rome had yet 
seen. At this time Cicero was residing wholly in the country, 
employing his leisure in literary and philosophical pursuits, 
till he was persuaded by his friends to quit his retirement, 
and to employ his authority and his eloquence in supporting 
the dignity and character of the republic in those days of its 
declension and danger. Between Cicero and Caesar there 
was at this eventful juncture an interchange of much outward 
regard, in-so-much that Caesar, to evince his confidence in 
Cicero, proposed to him to pay him a visit at his villa, which 
visit was accordingly made, after being expected for some 
time by Cicero with no small degree of uneasiness, as Caesar 
was now at the height of his power, and all his movements 
were regarded with doubt and apprehension. The account 
which Cicero gives of this visit in a letter to Atticus is very 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 213 

brief, but very graphic, making the reader all but a guest at 
a repast which, if the dignity of the persons present, their 
connection and their contrast, the one the great arbiter of the 
tongue, and the other of the sword, when human affairs were 
at a crisis as important as any the world had yet seen, are all 
duly considered, can hardly be surpassed in interest. 

Only five months were interposed between the return of 
Caesar from his last victories in Spain, which had placed him 
high above all the men upon earth, and his sad catastrophe 
in the senate house, during which interval he stood under the 
weight of his glory, an object of distrust and dread to many, 
of wonder and expectation to all ; seeing no safety for himself 
but in his power, and no guaranty for his power but in its 
unbounded extension. Thus critically circumstanced, we see 
him seated in familiar conversation at the table of the man 
who, in the achievements of intellect, had rivalled him in the 
number of his conquered provinces, and raised to himself a 
greater monument of substantial glory. 

To feel the value and force of this remarkable letter, we 
should have followed Caesar through the dire details of his 
desolating campaigns, kept him in view during the rapid 
career of his fortune, and given due heed to the demonstra- 
tions of that power, which was in him the result of all the 
constituents of earthly superiority, combined in their most 
perfect union, and carrying his luminous ascendancy to an 
altitude unattainable by the world around him, even of the 
Roman world, at a juncture most prolific of individual great- 
ness. The quality of decision, that spring of conscious power, 
by which the mind is sustained above the reach of ordinary 
humanity, was the great distinction of the character of Caesar. 
His ambition, not to be satisfied with less than universal 
empire, having objects which none could share, separated him 
in interest from all the world; and in that entireness and 
singleness of purpose which carries out a master-passion, 
through all impediments, physical and moral, to its ultimate 
fulfilment, Julius Caesar has hardly a parallel in history. 
Such was the man who, in the refulgent path of his san- 



214 LETTERS OF CICERO 

guinary glory, came to the passage of the Rubicon ; where, 
standing awhile, 16 not from indecision, but to solemnize, with 
a decent pause, the step which was to decide the sovereignty 
of the world, he seemed to gather into one effort the thoughts 
that for a moment started at their own resolves, arrested by 
the genius of indignant Rome and its frowning destinies. 

The Rubicon was passed, and the victories in Italy, Greece, 
Africa, and Spain rapidly followed, at the end of which, and 
within a little of his tragical end, came self-invited, to pass a 
day with the great patron of the liberties of his country, the 
man into whose conquering hands those liberties had been sur- 
rendered ; and it is thus that Cicero describes this memorable 
visit: 

CICERO TO ATTICUS. 

O this visitor so much dreaded ! And yet one whose visit I 
am not sorry to have received ; for it went off most pleasantly. 
When he came the evening before, on the 18th, to my neigh- 
bour Philippus, the house was so crowded with soldiers, that 
there was hardly a vacant room for Caesar to sup in. There 
were about two thousand of them, which made me feel no 
little uneasiness for the next day. But Barba Cassius set me 
at ease. He assigned me a guard : made the rest encamp in 
the fields ; so that my house was kept clear. On the 19th, he 
staid with Philippus till one o'clock; but admitted nobody. 
He was settling accounts, as I suppose, with Balbus. He then 
walked by the shore to my house. At two he took the bath. 
The verses on Mamurra 17 were then read to him. His coun- 

16 Consecutusque cohortes ad Rubiconem flumen, qui provinciae finis erat, 
paullum consistit; ac reputans quantum moliretur, conversus ad proximos, 
" etiam nunc, inquit, regredi possumus ; quod si ponticulum transierimus, 
omnia armis agenda erunt." Suet. Jul. Caes. 1. i. sect. 23. 

17 A Roman knight, who had been Caesar's general in Gaul, where he 
acquired great wealth ; and was the first Roman who made marble pillars 
to his house, and cased the same with marble. Plin. Hist. 36. 6. He was 
satirized together with Caesar for his luxury and debauchery, by Catullus. 
And these might have been the verses alluded to, Catulb 27= 55, 



TO HIS FRIENDS. 215 

tenance was unchanged. He was rubbed, and anointed, and 
then he disposed himself at table, after taking an emetic ; 18 
and eat and drank in a very free and easy manner ; for he was 
entertained hospitably and elegantly ; and our discourse re- 
sembled our repast in its relish and seasoning. Besides 
Caesar's table, his attendants were well provided for in three 
other rooms ; nor was there any deficiency in the provision 
made for his freedmen of lower quality, and his slaves ; but 
those of the better sort were elegantly entertained. Need I 
add more. I acted as man with man. Yet he was not the 
man to whom one would say at parting, " I pray let me have 
this visit repeated when you come this way again." Once is 
enough.^ Not a word passed between us on business, 20 
but much literary talk. 21 To make short of the matter, he was 
perfectly pleased and easy. He talked of spending one day 
at Puteoli ; another at Baiae. You have thus the account of 
the day's entertainment — an entertainment not agreeable, but 
still not troublesome to me. I shall stay here a little longer, 
and then to Tusculum. 

As he passed by Dolabella's villa, his troops marched close 
by the side of his horse, on the right and left; which was 
done no where else. I had this from Nicias. 22 



We will now dismiss this great man, with a short account 
of his departure out of a world, which had so long resounded 

ls A custom common with the Romans, and mentioned by Cicero to have been 
done by Caesar on different occasions. It was thought conducive to health as well 
as luxury. See Senec. Consol. ad Helv. 9; vomunt utedant, eduntutvomant, 
and Sueton. 12; Dio. 65. 734. 

19 Semel satis est. 20 cnrovdaiov ovdev in sermone. 

21 <pi\o\oya multa. 

22 Cicero's and Philip's villas were near each other on the Formian coast, 
near Cajeta. Dolabella, the third husband of Tullia, Cicero's daughter, though 
apparently always attached to the cause of Caesar, was a fickle, violent, and 
suspected man. After his cruel treatment of Trebonius, he ended his own life 
by the sword. 



216 LETTERS OF CICERO 

with his name and actions ; leaving his character to be 
gathered from his various correspondence, which may be con- 
sidered in themselves as a marvellous monument of genius, 
and as a record of antiquity unrivalled in importance and 
interest. We have the following account from an able pen of 
the last hours of Cicero. 

Cicero was at his Tusculan villa, with his brother and 
nephew, when he first received the news of the proscription, 
and of their being included in it. It was the design of the 
triumvirate to keep it secret, if possible, to the moment of 
execution, in order to surprise those whom they had destined 
to destruction, before they were aware of the danger, or had 
time to escape. But some of Cicero's friends found means to 
give him early notice of it ; upon which he set forward pre- 
sently with his brother and nephew, for Astura, the nearest 
villa which he had towards the sea, with intent to transport 
themselves directly out of the reach of their enemies. But 
Quintus, being wholly unprepared for so sudden a voyage, re- 
solved to turn back with his son to Rome, in confidence of lying 
concealed there, till they could provide money and necessaries 
for their support abroad. Cicero, in the meantime, found a 
vessel ready for him at Astura, in which he presently embarked ; 
but the winds being cross and turbulent, and the sea wholly 
uneasy to him, after he had sailed about two leagues along 
the coast, he landed at Circaeum, and spent a night near 
that place, in great anxiety and irresolution. The question 
was, what course he should steer; whether he should fly 
to Brutus, or to Cassius, or to S. Pompeius. But after all 
his deliberations, nothing pleased him so much as the ex- 
pedient of dying: 23 so that, as Plutarch says, he had some 
thoughts of returning to the city, and killing himself in the 
house of Caesar Octavianus, in order to leave the guilt and 
odium of his blood upon his perfidy and ingratitude. 

But the importunity of his servants prevailed with him to 

23 Utrumve Brutum, an Cassium an Sextum Pompeium peteret; Omnia 
illi displicuisse prseler mortem. Senec. Suasor. vii. 



TO HIS FRLENDS. 217 

sail forwards to Cajeta, where he went again on shore, to 
repose himself in his Formian villa, about a mile from the 
coast; weary of life, and the sea, and declaring, that he 
would die in that country which he had so often saved. Here 
he slept soundly for several hours, till his servants forced him 
into his litter, and carried him away towards the ship, through 
the private ways, and walks of his woods; having just heard 
that the soldiers were already come to the country in quest of 
him, and were not far from the villa. As soon as they were 
gone, the soldiers arrived at the house ; and finding him 
gone, went after him and overtook him in the wood. 

The leader of this band was M. Popilius Lsenas, whom Cicero 
had formerly defended, and saved in a capital cause. As 
soon as the soldiers appeared, Cicero's servants prepared 
themselves to defend their master ; but he commanded them 
to set him down, and make no resistance ; then looking upon 
his executioners with a firmness which almost daunted them, 
and thrusting his neck as far as he could out of the litter, he 
bade them do their work, and take what they wanted ; upon 
which they presently cut off his head, and both his hands, 
which they carried to Rome and presented to Antony ; who 
ordered them to be fixed upon the rostra, the head between 
the hands ; a sad spectacle, and viewed with tears by the 
whole Roman people. 24 

24 The two Quintus's, the brother and the brother's son, as is stated above, 
had left Cicero, in his flight towards the sea, and returned to Rome, where 
they hoped to furnish themselves with the necessary means of escaping into 
Macedonia, and to have concealed themselves in the meantime in some 
obscure part of the city. Their efforts were unsuccessful. The son was first 
discovered, and refusing to disclose the retreat of the father, was put to the 
rack; till the father, to stop the agonies of the son, came from his hiding- 
place, and voluntarily surrendered himself; making no other request to his 
executioners than that they should put him to death the first of the two. The 
son urged the same request, to spare him the misery of being the spectator of 
his father's murder ; so that the assassins, to satisfy them both, taking each of 
them apart, killed them by agreement at the same time. 

Pomponius Atticus saved himself from the fate of Cicero, and his brother 
and nephew, by his long course of cautious and temporizing measures. It is 
to this wariness and circumspection that we are to attribute the entire sup- 



218 LETTERS OF CICEUO. 

pression and disappearance of his numerous letters to Cicero ; which he is 
supposed to have withdrawn from Tiro, after Cicero's death. The marriage 
of his daughter with M. Agrippa, which is said to have been proposed and 
brought about by Antony, introduced him to the friendship and familiarity of 
Augustus. His granddaughter was afterwards married to Tiberius Caesar. He 
lived to old age, in peace and honour; but as Seneca observes, his name was 
preserved from oblivion . by the letters of Cicero. " Nomen Attici perjre 
Ciceronis epistolae non sinunt : nihil illi profuisset gener Agrippa, et Tiberius 
progener, et Drusus Caesar, pronepos: inter tam magna nomina taceretur, 
nisi Cicero ilium applicuisset." Senec. Epist. xxi. 



219 



CHAPTER XIII. 

OF THE LETTERS OF AUGUSTUS CiESAR. 

Augustus Caesar was a considerable writer of letters, but we 
have very few of them in existence. Suetonius has preserved 
two or three, written upon no very important occasions. Aulus 
Gellius has also given us one of his epistles, written to his 
grandson Caius, one of the sons of Agrippa by his daughter 
Julia, which is rather a pleasing specimen of a grandfather's 
tenderness. 

8 Kalend. October. 
Blessings upon thee ! my dear little Caius, as dear to me as 
one of my eyes, whose presence I always feel the want of, 
when absent from me, but particularly on such a day as 
was yesterday ; my eyes looked earnestly for you, my dear 
Caius, who, wheresoever you might happen then to be, didst 
not, I hope, forget to celebrate my 64th birth-day as a mo- 
ment of joyful interest; for, as you see, I have passed through 
my 63d year, the grand climacteric x of old age. I pray God 
that, as to the time which remains to me, it may be permitted 
me to pass through it in a prosperous state of the republic, 
you being preserved to me, and performing the part of a good 
man, worthy to succeed me in the station which I now hold. 



We have two of his letters to Tiberius, from which it ap- 
pears that among his recreations was that of playing with 
dice, for amusement, and especially in the month of Decem- 
ber, both on festal and common days. The letter which fol- 

1 KXifxciKTripa. 



220 LETTERS OF AUGUSTUS CESAR. 

lows is said by Suetonius to have been written with his own 
hand : — 

" I supped, my dear Tiberius, with my usual party ; Vini- 
cius and Salvius, the father, were at the table. We played 
yesterday and to day, between the repasts, at the old man's 
game, (yapovrucwg). When the dice were thrown, if the 
Canis or Senio were turned up, a penny was added to the 
stakes, which he was entitled to take for himself who hap- 
pened to ' throw Venus.' " 2 

And again, in another letter to the same person, he pro- 
ceeds as follows : — 

" We have passed the festival of Minerva, my dear Tibe- 
rius, pleasantly enough, for we have played every day, and 
have kept the table warm. Your brother bore his losses with 
a bad grace. In the end, however, he did not come off much 
the loser; but after a run of ill luck, fortune turned some- 
what unexpectedly in his favour. As for me, I have lost 
20,000 sesterces, which happened from my playing, as my 
habit is, with little regard to my own rights; for if I had strictly 
exacted what I was justly entitled to, or had kept back what 
I gave up, I should have gained 50,000 ; but I prefer this 
mode of acting, for it is this kindness towards others on 
which I build my hope of immortalizing my memory." 

The following extracts of letters, produced also by Sueto- 
nius, are interesting, as evincing a discreet and affectionate 
care of his family in this mighty prince, and especially his 
kind consideration for Claudius, the youthful son of German- 
icus : — 

" I have talked with Tiberius, 3 as you desired me, my dear 

2 A French translator of Suetonius subjoins the following note : — " Ce jeu 
probablement se jouoit avec des osselets; Pitiscus dit qu'on en employoit 
quatre qui produisoient trente-cinq coups, dont quatre dans ceux ou les quatre 
faces se ressembloient, dix-huit dans ceux ou il y en avoit trois egaux, et un 
seul quand tous les osselets etoient differens ; chaque coup avoit le nom d'un 
dieu ou d'une bete ou d'une courtisanne ; le coup le plus avantageux 
s'appeloit le coup de Venus : Ce jeu d'osselets etoit en Grece le jeu des 
enfants, et a Rome celui des vieillards." 

3 The husband of Livia before she was taken from him by Augustus. 



LETTERS OF AUGUSTUS C/ESALl. 221 

Livia, as to what is to be done with your grandson Tiberius 4 
at the approaching festival of Mars. We both agreed that 
we must determine without delay the plan which it will be 
necessary to adopt respecting him ; for if he is fit and well 
constituted for it, why should we hesitate to lead him through 
the same steps of preferment by which his brother has been 
gradually advanced ? But if we think, upon due considera- 
tion, that he is defective and blemished, both in mind and 
body, we must take care not to expose either him or ourselves 
to the derision and raillery of persons whose habit it is to di- 
vert themselves at the expense of the infirmity of others ; for 
we shall always be fluctuating if at every juncture we are 
considering afresh what we are to do; not having determined 
beforehand whether he is capable or not of holding any post 
of honour. At present, indeed, what are the things which you 
are consulting about? I have no objection to his exercising 
the sacerdotal function at the ensuing festival, if he is con- 
tent to put himself under the guidance of the son of Silanus, 
his kinsman, to be by him kept from doing any thing which 
may subject him to ridicule. I do not think it prudent to suffer 
him to be a spectator of the games from the imperial seat, for 
if he sits in the front of the spectacles he will be generally no- 
ticed. I do not approve of his going to the Alban Mount, or of 
his being at Rome during the Latin holidays ; for if it is pro- 
per for him to follow his brother to the mountain, why is it 
not equally proper for him to exercise magistracy in the city?. 
Thus, my Livia, you have my opinion, which is, that we 
should at once come to a fixed determination respecting this 
whole matter, that we may not remain in a state of fluctua- 
tion between hope and fear. You may submit this part of 
my letter to the perusal of Antonia." 5 

In a subsequent letter to Livia, he expresses himself thus 
on the same subject : — u During your absence I will take 
care that the young Tiberius 6 shall eat at my table, to avoid 

4 The praenomen of the Emperor Claudius, son of Drusus,and grandson of 
Livia. 

5 Wife of Drusus, and mother of Claudius. 6 Claudius. 



222 LETTERS OF AUGUSTUS CjESAR. 

his dining with his friends Sulpitius and Athenodorus, as I 
wish that the poor little prince may carefully select some- 
body whom he may more earnestly and discreetly propose to 
himself as a model in gesture, carriage, and deportment. He 
is altogether without grace before men of spirit and intelli- 
gence, though when he is self-collected, he manifests a good 
disposition. " And again he writes: — " Let me die, my dear 
Livia, if I have not been most agreeably surprised at witnes- 
sing with what skill your little grandson declaims. Could 
I have expected such success on the part of a person who 
generally expresses himself so ill?" 

The historian adds, that there is no doubt that Augustus 
trusted no office but that of the augural priesthood to Clau- 
dius, on account of his great defects. In his testament he 
placed him in the third rank of his inheritors, and gave him 
only a sixth of his goods, leaving him no more than about 
800 sestertia. 

The following extract of a letter from Augustus to Tibe- 
rius, his adopted son and successor, is curious, as manifesting 
the high opinion at one time entertained by the emperor, of 
that most profligate and unprincipled voluptuary ; and afford- 
ing an example of the rapidity with which those who set out 
well on no better motive than interest or expediency may pass 
through the stages of infamy to the utmost bound of moral 
debasement, while the memory of what they have missed and 
what they have marred, remains with them to deepen the 
shades of a guilty conscience. 

Suetonius introduces his extract of this letter with the 
following observations : — " I cannot but think that in an 
affair of so great importance, this most circumspect and 
prudent prince (Augustus Caesar) did not act without due 
consideration in his commendation of Tiberius; but that, 
weighing his virtues against his vices, he judged the balance 
to incline on the virtuous side, especially when we find him 
publicly declaring that he had adopted him for the sake of 
the republic, and in some of his epistles representing him as 
a man consummate in the art of war, and the stay and sup- 
port of the commonwealth." 



LETTERS OF AUGUSTUS CjESAR. 223 

The extract is as follows : — " Farewell, my dear Tiberius ! 
May you successfully proceed in your military career, exert- 
ing yourself in your command for me and for the Muses. I 
must address you as my most cherished friend, bravest of 
men, and a most skilful general. Farewell, and make the due 
preparation for your winter quarters. I do really think, my 
dear Tiberius, that amidst such difficulties as you now have 
to combat with, no one could have conducted himself more 
prudently than you have done, especially when your soldiers 
second you with so little courage. All those who have been 
with you declare that the following verse would be applicable 
to you : 

Unus homo nobis vigilando restituit rem. 7 

Whenever I have any prospect before me that demands very 
mature reflection, or which occasions me any particular un- 
easiness or embarrassment, I regret my distance from my 
Tiberius, and I am put in mind of the words of Diomede in 
Homer: — 'When he accompanies me, we are both rescued, as 
if from the fire, so able is he in counsel/ When I hear and I 
read that you are so wasted by continual labour, may I perish 
if my whole body is not seized with a trembling ! And I be- 
seech you to spare yourself, lest if we should hear of your 
being sick, both your mother and myself should die with 
grief, and the prosperity of the empire should be endangered. 
Unless I can hear of your being well, I should be totally 
regardless of my own health. I pray the gods to preserve you, 
and to keep you in a sound and effective state now and al- 
ways, if they have any favour towards the Roman people." 



A parody upon the verse of Ennius given us in Cicero de Senectute. 



224 



CHAPTER XIV. 

LETTERS OF SENECA. 

Seneca, although he hardly knew how to lay by the philo- 
sopher in his familiar moments, seems to have had a just idea 
of the proper scope and characteristics of good letter-writing. 
He was professedly on the side of a free and colloquial style. 
One of his epistles to Lucilius is introduced with the follow- 
ing remarks : — ei You complain of the little care I take in 
polishing the letters which you receive from me. The truth 
is, that the easy and unstudied diction in which I express 
myself in conversing with you, is just that which I am desir- 
ous of carrying into my correspondence with you, so that it 
may have nothing in it borrowed or fictitious. I wish so to 
write as to impress upon you the conviction that I think and 
feel what I express." In other places he insists with his 
characteristic energy on the use to be made of correspondence 
as an efficacious vehicle of salutary counsel. " You are right 
in requesting a more frequent epistolary commerce between 
us. That mode of discoursing is the most profitable which 
makes its way to the mind piece-meal. Diffuse lectures pre- 
pared for popular assemblies come less intimately home to 
the understanding, though characterised by more noise and 
notoriety. Philosophy, in effect, is neither more nor less 
than good counsel; and the talent of giving counsel in simple 
and perspicuous terms is very rare. There are occasions 
when more formal instructions are necessary, as when reluc- 
tant minds are to be forcibly impelled ; but where the object 
is to convey knowledge, not to excite aspirations after it, we 
do wisest in adopting in our letters the language of common 
intercourse." 1 

1 Ep. xxxviii. 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 225 

Such was Seneca's theory concerning letter-writing. He 
has given us, however, but few examples of that familiar style 
of which he has left us his commendation. His letters to 
Lucilius were the vehicles of his noble thoughts — such as 
were not of a character to enter gracefully into union with 
topics of common and ephemeral interest, or with the details 
of incidental intercourse; still less with associations of a gay 
and humorous cast. There are, however, among the letters 
of this great Roman, some specimens of that pensively play- 
ful kind, of which we have so many pleasing examples in the 
correspondence of some of our best Christian moralists. 

SENECA TO LUCILIUS. 

Whithersoever I turn myself, spectacles, reminding me of 
my old age, present themselves. I went the other day to my 
country house just without the city, and was complaining 
how much it seemed out of repair, notwithstanding the money 
which I had laid out upon it. " It may be so," said my bailiff, 
*' but it is from no want of care in me. I have done all in my 
power to keep it up, but the truth is, it is very old." Now 
you must know this villa was of my own raising, and has 
grown to its present state under my hands. What then have 
I to expect, if stones laid down in my own time have begun 
to shew symptoms of decay. Being put by this a little out 
of humour with the man, I laid hold of the first occasion of 
finding fault. " It seems to me/' said I, " that these plane 
trees have been neglected. How rotten and withered are 
these branches ! In what a wretched and foul condition are 
these stems ! This would not have happened if any one had 
dug round it, and given it water." Upon this my bailiff 
swears heartily that he had done all he could, and spared no 
pains, but that they were old. Now, between ourselves, I 
planted these trees, and witnessed their first foliage. Turning 
to the gate, I said, " And pray who is that decrepit old fel- 
low whom you have, properly enough, placed here, with his 

Q 



226 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

face turned towards the door ? 2 Where in the world did you 
pick up this man ? What whim is this, to bring this strange 
corpse into my house ?" "What! don't you know me ?" says 
the old man; u I am Felicio, to whom you used formerly to 
bring playthings. I am the son of Philositus, your former 
bailiff : your little favourite playfellow." " Surely," said I, 
the man is out of his mind. He my little playfellow ! The 
thing is impossible. But yet it may be, for I see he is shed- 
ding his teeth." 

Thus am I indebted to my villa for reminding me, at every 
turn, of my old age. Let us embrace it, let us love it. To 
him who knows how to use it, it is full of enjoyment. Fruit 
is most grateful towards the end of the season. Youth, when 
one is just losing it, is the most attractive. The last potation 
is the most agreeable to the lovers of wine ; and every plea- 
sure is most valued when it is coming to its end. Decay, 
when it is gradual, and not precipitate, is really pleasant. 
I don't fear to pronounce a man standing on the very ultimate 
verge of life to have his solace ; or at least we may say that 
the absence of all want is itself a sort of pleasure. How 
sweet it is to have lived out, and taken leave of, all anxious 
desires ! 

But you will say that it is painful to have death before our 
eyes. My answer is in the first place, that it ought always to 
be before the eyes as well of the young as of the old ; for we 
are not summoned as we stand in the register. And then that 
no one is so old as to make it sinful to expect another day. 
Every day is another step in life. All our time consists of 
parts : of circles within circles of different orbits ; some one 
of which comprehends the rest ; and thus compasses the 
whole life of man from the beginning to the end of life. One 
includes the years of youth ; another circumscribes only the 

2 Alluding to the ancient custom of laying out a dead body near the thresh- 
old, at the entrance or doorway. 

'Of jiioi evi kXlgu] dtda'iyiiEVog o%ei ^aXfcw 

Karat, ava TrpoQvpov Tsrpafifievog. 
Horn. II. 1. xix. 212; and see Vim, iEn. ii. 30. Pers. Sat. iii. 103. 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 227 

period of childhood. A single year includes all those portions 
of time, of which the whole of existence is but the multipli- 
cation. A month lies within a narrower circle, and a day 
within one still of smaller extent. And yet the day has its 
beginning and its end, from the rising; to the setting sun. 
Heraclitus, who from his obscurity got the name of Scotinus, 
says " dies par omni est:" which some interpret, as if he 
had said, they are equal as to hours, which is true enough ; 
for if a day is a period of twenty-four hours, in that respect 
all days are equal; since the night takes up what the day 
loses. Another holds the meaning to be, that one day is but 
the counterpart of the other. After all, the longest space of 
time exhibits only what may be found in one day — light and 
darkness, with their vicissitudes and alternations. Every day 
should be therefore so ordered and disposed, as if it closed 
the series, and were the measure and completion of our exist- 
ence. Pacuvius, who made Syria his own country by long 
residence in it, when he had regaled himself with wine and 
feasting, as at a funeral banquet, caused himself to be carried 
from supper to his bed-chamber, that amidst the applause of 
his companions, the following words might be chanted to 
music — j3f€atwrcu, j3e€aiwrat, — He hath lived, he hath lived ; 
and such was his practice every day. Now this that was 
done by him with a bad conscience, let us do with a good 
one ; and when retiring to our rest, let us with composed and 
cheerful spirits have to say " Vixi, et quern cursum dederat 
fortuna peregi." If God should vouchsafe us a to-morrow, 
let us receive it with joy and thankfulness. 

He is the happiest man, and the secure possessor of him- 
self, who waits for the morrow without solicitude : — he who 
can go to bed at night saying, " I have lived " in the full sense 
of the phrase, rises every morning with a day gained. 3 



3 This letter is concluded with a precept borrowed from Epicurus, in which 
self-murder is vindicated and recommended, under circumstances of despera- 
tion, to which Seneca unhappily assents. It was far, however, from being 
universally assented to by the Pagan world ; but on the contrary, was con- 



228 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

The following letter upon elocution is well worthy of the 
attention of the scholar and the gentleman. 



TO LUCIL1US. 

You merit my thanks, Lucilius, for your frequent corres- 
pondence ; for you thereby shew yourself to me in the only 
way you can. I never receive a letter from you, that does 
not immediately bring me into your company. If the pic- 
tures of our absent friends are agreeable to us, which revive 
the remembrance of them, and soften the regret occasioned 
by their absence, by a solace, that is unsubstantial and delu- 
sive; how much more delightful are letters, which bring 
before us their very footsteps, — the very impressions and 
traces of their characters. Whatever is sweet in the aspect of 
those we love, is in a manner realized in a letter by the very 
impression of their hands. 

You say you heard that Serapio, the philosopher, when 
he came to Sicily, was wont to roll out his words, which he 
not only poured forth without stopping, but pressed and 
crowded them together in such a manner, that one utterance 
hardly sufficed for them. This I by no means approve in a 
philosopher, whose enunciation, like his life, ought to be com- 
posed ; for nothing is well ordered that proceeds with pre- 
cipitation and hurry. The more animated style, and that 
which proceeds without intermission like a fall of snow, is in 
Homer attributed to the orator by profession ; but the milder 
form, sweeter than honey, is represented as coming from the 
aged Nestor. I would wish it to be your opinion, that a rapid 
and verbose way of speaking is more characteristic of one 
who goes about hawking his wares, than of one who is treat- 
ing of a great and serious subject ; and whose office it is to 
teach. Neither do I think that words should distil drop by 
drop, any more than that they should run in a rapid current. 



demned by Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Cicero ; and even Brutus himself, 
though he fell by his own hands, condemned the act in Cato. 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 229 

They should neither keep our ears upon the stretch, nor 
oppress them with tediousness. Poverty and paucity of 
words render an audience inattentive, and we are wearied by 
a slow and hesitating utterance ; though, at the same time 
it must be owned, that what comes after being somewhat 
waited for settles more in the mind, than what passes on 
with a flying speed. And remember, that men are said to 
deliver what they teach ; but what is presented to us in 
this flying manner cannot be said to be delivered to us. 
And remember, too, that an oration which professes to have 
truth for its object should be characterised by an unstudied 
simplicity. A popular harangue has little to do with truth; 
its object is to move the multitude, and to hurry along with 
it the ear of the unreflecting. It waits not to be handled — it 
vanishes from observation. But how can that rule others, 
which submits to no rule itself. Moreover, a discourse which 
is intended to heal distempered minds ought to descend into 
them. No medicine can be effectual unless it be retained 
sometime in the system. A hurried speech has little else than 
sound and inanity : it makes more noise than impression. 
My fears are to be quieted ; my passions are to be controlled ; 
my suspicions to be dispersed ; luxury is to be restrained ; 
avarice to be reproved. And which of these things can be 
effected in a hurry ? What physician can cure his patients 
as he flies. And what pleasure can we receive from a mere 
noisy torrent of words poured upon us without selection. 
As it is sufficient once to have witnessed a thing which we 
might scarcely have thought credible, so it is abundantly 
enough to have once heard one of these men who thus exercise 
their lungs. What can any one learn ? what can he follow ? 
Or how can that man enter into the minds of others whose 
oratory is confused, and his words always at their full speed 
so as not to be stopped. As those who are running down hill 
cannot stop when they please, but the body is hurried along 
by its own weight against its will, so does an impetuous volu- 
bility of speech lose the management of itself; while it is 
wholly unsuited to the gravity of philosophy ; which ought to 



230 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

plant and not to project its words; and to proceed in an 
orderly method. What! you will say; shall a discourse 
never mount above this level? Why not? provided it does 
it without the sacrifice of dignity; which commotion and 
violence are sure to destroy. Let it have what strength it 
may, so as it be kept within correct bounds. Let it flow in 
an uninterrupted stream, but not rush like a torrent. I would 
hardly allow an orator, much less a philosopher to use such 
a velocity of speech, as to lose his proper control of him- 
self; and to break through the rules of propriety. How 
can the judge, who may sometimes be a person unskilled and 
inexperienced, follow a speaker, whom ostentation, or affected 
passion hurries on beyond his power of self management ? 
Let his speed be regulated by the capacity of the ears he is 
addressing to imbibe his instructions. Pay, therefore, no 
regard to those who value what is said for its quantity, rather 
than its quality. This then is the eloquence which I require 
in a wise man. I do not expect from him an elocution, that 
knows no pause. I would rather it should be carried forward, 
than run on of itself. But I am the more anxious to keep 
you from this mistaken course, as you cannot enter upon it 
without first dismissing all sense of decorum. You must put 
on a face of brass, and almost deafen yourself with your own 
vociferation : for in this sort of heedless rapidity you will be 
sure to throw out things, which you will much rather not 
have said. This, I repeat, is a mode of proceeding which 
you cannot adopt without the sacrifice of that modesty for 
which credit is now given you. And even this art of rapid 
speaking, is not to be acquired without daily exercise, and call- 
ing off your mind from things, to devote it to the study of words ; 
which after having made yourself master of, you will have 
need of an equal degree of diligence to restrain. As a modest 
gait and carriage become a wise man, so does a plain and un- 
ostentatious discourse. The sum of all I have said is this, — I 
would have you adopt a style of speaking slow and distinct. 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 231 

The admiration excited by the succeeding letter is softened 
into sorrow when we reflect on the struggle Seneca had to 
maintain with the ignorance and prejudices of his age and 
country. Who that has perused the following beautiful 
effusion can fail to recognise in the brother of Gallio the per- 
vasive efficacy of those blessed truths which had silently in- 
formed with a new spirit the whole of the gentile philosophy. 

TO LUCILIUS. 

There cannot be a better or more wholesome design than 
that which you have formed, of persevering in the pursuit of 
wisdom : but how foolish it would be to stop at mere wishes 
for that which it is in your power to obtain. We need not 
for that purpose lift up our hands to heaven, nor pray the 
sedile to admit us to the ear of the image, that we may be the 
better heard ; God is near thee, He is with thee, He is in 
thee. Thus far will I venture to say, Lucilius, a holy spirit 
resides within us, the observer of our good and evil propensi- 
ties, our guide and guardian : as we treat this monitor, so he 
treats us : and sure I am, no good man is without God. 
Without his help, what man could ever rise above the power 
of fortune ? It is He that inspires us with noble and erect 
thoughts. What god I will not venture to say ; but that a 
god dwells in the bosom of every good man is certain. If 
suddenly there stands before you an ancient grove of more 
than ordinary grandeur, with its branches so closely inter- 
woven that they shut out the view of the sky; the towering 
trees, the solitude of the place, and its awful and continuous 
shade, cannot but impress you with the sense of a present 
Deity : if, when a cave is seen at the foot of a mountain, worn 
into the solid stone by natural causes, the gloomy excavation 
fills the mind with a sort of religious fear : if we look with a 
feeling of awe on the sources of mighty rivers : if the sudden 
eruption of a vast volume of water from the secret places of 
the earth is consecrated by an altar: if hot springs, mys- 
teriously issuing from the earth, attract our adoration : if 



232 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

lakes are held sacred for their opacity and depth ; surely the 
feeling can be no less solemn with which one looks upon a man 
standing untroubled in the midst of dangers, — untainted by 
impure desires, — happy in adverse fortunes, — placid in storms, 
— looking down as from an eminence upon the men of this 
world, — on a level with the gods themselves : does not a feel- 
ing of homage take possession of the mind of the beholder? 
Are you not compelled to say, the thing I contemplate is too 
great and lofty to be considered as resembling in its nature 
the little body it dwells in ? A divine power seems to descend 
upon it from above : it can be nothing less than a celestial 
influence that actuates a mind at once excelling and modest, 
passing by the things of earth as too little to engage and 
arrest its thoughts, and looking with scorn upon the objects 
of our ordinary fears and wishes. A thing so great cannot 
keep its erect posture without the special support of God 
within us. As the beams of the sun reach indeed to the earth, 
but have their home in the place from whence they emanate, 
so a mind of this grand and holy character, and sent among 
us, it would seem, to bring us to a nearer acquaintance with 
what is truly divine, has its converse with men, but immove- 
ably adheres to the place of its origin ; on that it depends, to 
that it looks, and to that its energies are directed ; while, with 
a conscious superiority, it takes a part in the things of this 
world. 

And what is this but a mind that leans upon nothing but 
its own virtue ? For what can be more absurd than to praise 
in a man that which is not his own ; what greater folly than 
to admire in one man what may in a moment be transferred 
to another. A steed is not made better by his golden bridle. 
It is one thing to see a lion tamed to submission, and stroked 
and dressed by his keeper, and another to see him with his 
spirit unbroken, and unreduced by the hand of man : fierce 
and impetuous, as nature designed him to be, beautiful in 
his wildness, and decked with terror, in which consists his 
majesty : how much is this unspoiled animal to be preferred 
to one that has been deprived of his strength by confinement, 
and covered with plates of gold. 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 233 

No one has a right to glory but in that which is properly 
his own. The property of the vine is its fertility ; and nothing 
is to be commended in man but that which is no less his own. 
He has a fine family and a fine house, large farms and much 
money at interest; still nothing of all this is in him, but about 
him. Praise only that in him which can neither be given 
him, nor be taken from him. 

Do you ask what is truly a man's own ? It is his mind, and 
the faculty of reason kept entire within it. Man is a rational 
animal : he has, therefore, his own proper good complete in 
himself, if he has accomplished the purpose for which he was 
born. But what is it which this his faculty of reason requires 
of him ? The easiest thing in the world, if it were not that 
the common madness of the world made it difficult, — to live 
according to his proper nature. We urge each other on in 
vice. And what hope have we of being restored to soundness 
of thinking, while we are driven on by the common depravity, 
and there is no one to restrain us. 



The next letter is not surpassed by any thing from the pen 
of Seneca. It treats of a very elegant and weighty subject 
in a playful and easy style ; and it would be difficult to find 
a letter of Cicero in which the agreeable and useful appear 
together in closer union. True composure of mind, its 
proper place, its independence of circumstances, its collected- 
ness amidst general disturbance, and its secluded seat in the 
recesses of the bosom, are the great subjects of the letter : and 
it gives us, by the way, some instances of the affinity between 
all nations and times in the habits of coarse and ordinary life. 

TO LUCIL1US. 

I really begin to think that silence is.not so necessary as it 
may seem to the man of study. Behold me situated where 
every variety of noise clamours around me. I lodge directly 
over the public bath. Imagine all kinds of sounds to which 
one's ears are the most irreconcileable. I will begin with 



234 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

those stout fellows who come here to practise boxing. When 
they throw about their hands with a load of lead in them, and 
labour at their work, or imitate those who do so, I hear their 
groans ; and as often as they send forth their breath, after 
long holding it in, I hear their sharp and hissing respirations. 
When one of those idle fellows whose occupation it is to anoint 
the common wrestlers comes in my way, I am sure to hear the 
report of his slap upon his patient's shoulders, which he in- 
flicts with the flat or hollow palm of his hand ; but if a ball 
player comes in and begins to count his balls, I am really 
almost done for. To these annoyances you must add the 
swaggering blusterer, with his foul manners and loud tongue, 
the apprehended thief, and the bawling of one who is delighted 
with hearing his own voice echo through the bath ; then 
comes the splashing sound of the bather, who leaps into the 
pool ; and then the hubbub of the talkers, whose voices would 
be bearable enough if one heard only these. Nor must you 
leave out the depilatory operator, whistling out his shrill and 
squeaking tones to draw attention, and never silent but when 
he is at his work, or has got some other to call for his service. 
Next come the confectioner, the seller of sausages and cakes, 
the retailers from the cooks' shops, with their multifarious 
cries, and the venders of small wares with their peculiar tone. 
Surely, you say, you must be deaf, or have nerves of iron, 
who can be in your senses amidst such various and dissonant 
sounds ; when the mere greetings of his acquaintance almost 
kills our friend Crysippus. But to tell you the truth, all this 
noise no more disturbs me than running or falling water: 
though I have heard that to a certain people on the borders 
of the river Nile it seemed a sufficient reason for changing 
the site of their city, that they were unable to bear the noise 
of the waterfalls. As for me, I am more distracted by an 
articulate utterance than by any mere noise. This draws off 
the mind, the other merely strikes upon the ear. 

Among the noises which have not the effect of distracting 
my mind, I reckon the carriages passing to and fro, an arti- 
ficer lodging in the same house with me, a sawyer next door, 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 235 

a man sweating at his turnery, or making trial of his pipes, 
screaming rather than singing. The sound, indeed, which is 
taken up after intermissions is more annoying to me than that 
which is continued. But I have been so inured to these 
things, that methinks I could hear a boatswain vociferating 
orders to his rowers at the very top of his voice without dis- 
composure. I force my mind to be so intent upon itself as 
not to be called off by external objects. Whatever noise pre- 
vails without I regard it not, so long as there is no tumult 
within, no jarring contention between cupidity and fear, no 
strife between avarice and luxury, no one propensity at war 
with another ; for what avails the tranquillity of the region 
round, if the interior is torn with contending passions. The 
poet says — 

All things, at night, lay hnsh'd in soft repose. 

But this is not the general case, there is no soft repose but 
what is the effect of reason. The night of itself rather brings 
inquietude than dispels it : it only varies the scene of our 
mental sufferings : for the dreams of those who sleep in their 
anxieties are as full of trouble as the accidents of the day. 
True tranquillity is the indication and expansion of a sound 
mind. Look at that man who anxiously seeks his repose in the 
stillness of his family ; for the sake of whose quiet, and 
that no sound may reach his ears, all the host of his servants 
are ordered to keep a profound silence, and those who approach 
him are hardly to touch the ground. Yet is he turning from 
side to side, and would fain dose for an instant ; still complain- 
ing that he is disturbed by noises which he does not hear. 
And what, now, do you think is the cause of all this ? It is 
his mind, which is the source of its own trouble. This 
requires to be appeased ; here there is a sedition that must be 
quelled. The body may rest in seeming repose, but if you 
take that as the test of tranquillity, you are mistaken : rest is 
sometimes restless. It is better, therefore, to engage ourselves 
in some active employment, or the cultivation of some liberal 



236 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

arts, when idleness, with its accompanying impatience of self, 
has seized upon us. Great generals, when they perceive their 
soldiers to grow restless and disobedient, put them to some 
special labour, or occupy them in some enterprize or expedi- 
tion. Those who are tied down to business have no time for 
idle waste ; nor is there a more simple certainty than that for 
the vices which idleness engenders employment is the only 
cure. 

We flatter ourselves with the pleasing thought of retiring 
from the wearisomeness of public business, and the irksome- 
ness of some uneasy station ; but in the very shade of that 
retreat, into which our timidity or fatigue have driven us, 
ambition makes new shoots : it may seem to have been de- 
stroyed and rooted out; when it has, in truth, only disap- 
peared for a time, discomfited and disappointed by opposition 
and bad success. We may say the same of luxury, which 
may seem at one time to have given way to better habits, but 
again it proffers its bribes to the converts to temperance, and 
in the midst of our new professions of frugality, surprizes us 
with a renewal of indulgences, left only for a while, not ba- 
nished or condemned, but rather to be pursued with greater 
vehemence from being better concealed. All vices are mode- 
rated by exposure ; as bodily diseases, when, instead of lurking 
in the system, they break out upon the surface, and shew their 
characteristic virulence, are more within the reach of cure. 
Avarice, ambition, and the other maladies of the mind, may 
then be regarded as taking their most fatal hold when they 
work secretly behind a healthy exterior. We seem at our 
ease when we are far from being so. If we act towards our- 
selves with good faith, if we have in right earnest sounded 
our retreat, if we have really learned to despise the vain but 
unsubstantial things of the world, nothing, as I have before 
said, will be able to call us from ourselves. Neither noise 
nor melody will disturb our cogitations, now become solid 
and sure. That disposition is but of a flimsy texture, and 
unable to retreat upon itself, which is startled at every sound 
and every accident; light as it is, it harbours an anxious 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 237 

spirit, and an internal dread, that makes it inquisitive and 
apprehensive ; reminding us of the lines of Virgil — 

I who so bold and dauntless just before 
The Grecian darts and shocks of lances bore, 
At every shadow now am seized with fear, 
Not for myself, but for the charge I bear. 

We have here first presented to us, in the same individual, a 
wise man, whom neither brandished spears, nor the clashing 
arms of the close encounter, nor the tumbling ruins of the 
captured city could affright; and then a man unused to 
danger, full of alarms, startled at every noise, whom every 
sound terrifies like the noise of a multitude, and the slightest 
motion deprives of his senses. It is his burthen that makes 
him thus timorous. Choose whom you will among the men 
of prosperous fortune, who gather much, and carry much, you 
will see him full of fears and anxieties for that by which he 
is accompanied and encumbered. Know, therefore, that then 
only you are in a composed state, when nothing that clamours 
around you seems to be your concern ; when no sound gives 
you alarm, whether it be the voice of blandishment, the voice 
of menace, or only the voice of vacancy. What ! you will 
then say, is it not sometimes agreeable to be free from noise 
and brawling? It is so: and, as I take your hint, I will cer- 
tainly migrate from this spot. If I have been willing to try 
and exercise my patience, where is the necessity for my doing 
this penance any longer? Nor will I forget that there is, 
after all, an easy method of excluding sounds which it is not 
convenient to hear by stopping one's ears — the remedy used 
by Ulysses to preserve his companions from the syrens. 



I transcribe a letter of this extraordinary Roman to his 
friend, in which his great thoughts and high principles are 
set forth in language becoming their dignity. The love and 
veneration he declares himself to feel for men deservedly 



238 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

called . great, indicates an enthusiasm in the cause of virtue, 
which it is impossible to contemplate without holding in 
great honour the noble conceptions of moral excellence that 
raised the standard of Seneca's philosophy to so near an 
approach to the gospel pattern. The general style of the letter 
is on a level with its exalted sentiments: — 



TO LUC1LIUS. 

You were yesterday with us. If I were only to mention such 
a yesterday, without coupling you with it, you might com- 
plain. I have added, therefore, you were with us: for you are 
always with me. Some friends stepped in, — such for whom 
we generally make a larger fire; not such as breaks forth 
from the kitchens of those who live splendidly, alarming the 
watchmen, but a modest one, enough to shew that I had 
some guests with me. Our discourse was various, as at a 
convivial meeting, bringing nothing to a conclusion, but 
passing quickly from one subject to another. At length we 
agreed to read a treatise of Q. Sextius, — a great man, if you 
will take my judgment of him, and, deny it who will, a Stoic. 
What vigour, what spirit he possesses ! such as you will in 
vain look for through the whole tribe of the philosophers, 
whose writings have indeed the lustre of a great name, but 
have no other vitality in them. They propose, they dispute, 
they cavil. They cannot put mind into others who have no 
mind themselves. When you read Sextius, you exclaim, he 
is all alive, vigorous, free, more than man ; he sends me 
away convinced, and full of confidence. Whatever may have 
been the previous disposition of my mind ; when I read him, I 
must tell you plainly I become a match for all vicissitudes, 
and am ready to cry out, why do you delay, fortune, come on, 
you see me prepared. I clothe myself with his mind ; that 
mind which seeks for an occasion to have its strength tried, 
and to give proof of its virtue. 

Spumantemque dari pecora inter inertia votis 
Optat aprum, autfidvum descendere monte leonem. 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 239 

I likewise seem to long for an occasion of triumph, and for 
the exercise of my patience. The excellence of Sextius con- 
sists in this, he sets before you the constituent greatness of a 
happy life, while at the same time he brings it within your 
reach. You are made to perceive that it is placed on high, 
but yet attainable by the willing mind. By the force of 
virtue itself you will be made at once to gaze upon it with 
admiration and with good hope. 

As to myself, this contemplation of the beauty of wisdom 
engrosses much of my time, I turn towards it overwhelmed 
with wonder and delight, like that with which I survey the 
spectacle of this wide world, on which I often look with sur- 
prise, as if I were opening my eyes upon it for the first time, 
a fresh spectator of its glories. I pay homage to the discoveries 
of wisdom, and to the discoverers. I approach them, as if / 
were coming to take possession of an inheritance. I so ap- 
propriate their acquisitions, and the fruits of their industry 
that they seem to have been designed for me. But let us 
manage them with the thrift of a careful householder. Let us 
increase the store which has been thus transmitted to us. Let 
this inheritance pass improved to our posterity. Much work 
remains to be done upon these possessions, and will yet remain : 
nor to one born after a thousand generations will there be want- 
ing an occasion of yet adding something to what has thus 
descended. But if all discoveries had been exhausted by the 
ancients ; yet the application of their knowledge, the disposi- 
tion of their discoveries would always be new. 

Much has been done by those who have gone before us, 
but they have not finished the work. They are nevertheless 
well worthy of our veneration, and almost our worship. Why 
should I not preserve the statues and pictures of those great 
men, who have preceded us, as provocatives to imitation ? 
why should I not celebrate their birth days? Why should I 
not always make honourable mention of them ? The venera- 
tion which is due from me to my tutors, is due from me also 
to the preceptors of the whole of the species to which I 
belong; who have laid the foundation of so much good. If 
I meet a consul, or a praetor, I do whatever is usual in token 



240 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

of respect and honour to his rank and station. I dismount 
from my horse, uncover my head, and make way for them. 
And shall I not bear in my bosom the same homage for each 
of the Cato's, for Laelius, for Socrates, and for Cleanthes ? 
Truly, I do greatly honour them, and rise up at the bare 
mention of their names. 



TO LUCILIUS. 

I often return from a ride in my chariot, as much fatigued 
as if I had walked as far as I had ridden. For it is an effort 
to me to be carried a long way. And I do not know whether 
this kind of labour is not the more fatiguing, because not 
according to the design of nature ; which has given us feet 
to walk with, as well as eyes to see withal. Indulgence brings 
on debility : what we long are unwilling to do, we are at 
length unable to do. Still, however, it was necessary to give 
myself a little shaking either to discuss the phlegm which 
troubled me, or that, if from any cause my respiration was im- 
peded, I might be relieved by this little agitation. And, indeed, 
it was of service to me. I therefore extended my drive ; invited 
by the pleasantness of the shore that winds between Cumse 
and the villa of Servilius Vatia, where the narrow pass has 
on one side the sea, and on the other the lake for its barrier. 
The ground had been rendered more than usually firm and 
solid by the late tempest ; and by frequent overflowings had 
been made perfectly smooth and level. 

According to my custom I began to look about me to see 
whether I could find anything which might afford me matter 
of profitable reflection. I directed my eyes towards the coun- 
try house which sometime ago belonged to Vatia. In this 
residence lived that rich praetorian, who had signalized him- 
self by nothing but his indolence. And for no other reason 
was he accounted a happy man: for as often as the friendship 
of Asinius Gallus, or the hatred and then the love of Sejanus 
(for it was alike dangerous to incur the hatred, or attract the 
friendship of that man,) had brought ruin upon any one, the 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 241 

multitude cried out, O Vatia ! you alone know how to live. 
The truth is, he knew how to retreat from observation, but 
not how to live. He knew not the difference between a retired 
life and an idle one. I never passed by this villa without 
crying out, " Vatia hie situs est/' Vatia lies here. 

Philosophy, my Lucilius, is so sacred and venerable a 
thing, that to be merely like it, and not the thing itself is to 
falsify it. The vulgar think the man who has withdrawn from 
business, is without perplexity, self-satisfied, and living to 
himself. Neither of which is the predicament of any but 
the wise man. He, indeed, being a stranger to anxiety, knows 
how to live beneficially for himself, for he knows how truly to 
live. Whereas he who has run away from business and men, 
self-banished by the disappointment of his ambitious hopes ; 
who cannot without mortification see others more prosperous 
than himself; who like a fearful and inert animal hides him- 
self out of mere timidity; does not live to his proper self, but 
to his appetites, his sleep, and his sensualities. He lives not 
to himself, who lives for none else. Still there is something 
so great in constancy, and perseverance in a purpose, that a 
determination of mind, even in the habit of idleness, has 
something imposing in it. 

As touching the villa itself, I can say nothing with certainty 
about it. I am only acquainted with its front and exterior, 
which shews itself to the passers by. There are two grottos 
of laborious* workmanship ; each of whose floors are of equal 
dimensions with the court yard. One of which does not 
admit the sun ; the other is exposed to it from its rising to its 
setting. A river which runs into the sea and the Acherusian 
lake, divides, like a canal, a grove of plane trees : and this 
river though frequently drawn, furnishes still an abundance 
of fish ; but the fishermen spare it when the sea is open to 
them. Every one catches the fish where he can best get at 
them, when the stormy state of the sea gives them a holiday. 
But what may be considered as a great advantage to this 
villa, is that it has BaiaB on the other side of the wall; being 
so situated as to be exempt from its inconveniences, while it 

R 



242 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

partakes fully of its pleasures. These recommendations I know 
it merits ; — and I believe it is a villa inhabitable throughout 
the whole year. It looks towards the west; and receives it 
so as to deprive Baise of it. 

Vatia, therefore, seems not injudiciously to have chosen 
this villa, in which to wear out the leisure of indolent old age. 
But in truth, place contributes little towards tranquillity. 
It is mind which controls all things. I have seen minds full 
of sorrow and trouble in a cheerful and pleasant villa ; and 
in a solitary situation I have seen men fatigued with busi- 
ness. Wherefore there is no reason why you should think 
yourself so ill off, because you are not in Campania. 

Send us your thoughts. One may hold conversation 
with absent friends. And, indeed, as often, and as long as 
we please. Nay, indeed, we enjoy this pleasure the more 
for being absent. The presence of a friend puts a degree of 
reserve upon us. And as when we are together we talk and 
walk at leisure; so when we part, we are apt to think no 
more about those we have just been with. We should, there- 
fore, complain less of absence from each other than we do ; for 
those who are thrown most together are often virtually absent. 
Look to the nights which are passed in necessary separation : 
then to the diversity of occupation ; then to the distinct 
studies which engage us ; and our frequent calls into the 
country; and it will be perceived that a journey to a distance 
does not rob us of much of each other's society. It is in the 
mind that we must keep the possession of our friend. This is 
never absent. It daily sees whom it pleases. Therefore study 
with me ; sup with me ; walk with me. We should live, 
indeed, within narrow bounds, if the door were shut upon our 
thoughts. I see you, my Lucilius, and hear you as plainly as 
ever. I am so much with you in thought, that I begin to doubt 
whether I shall feel it worth while to write you any more 
epistles, or not content myself rather with mere notes or billets. 



It would be great injustice to Seneca, to pass by his remark- 
able letter on the l first cause.' It is not only a very valuable 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 243 

compendium of doctrine, but exhibits so much judgment, 
and such advanced views respecting the origin of things, and 
the ends and designs of our being, that it may be doubted 
whether the reason of man apart from revelation has anything 
greater to shew in support of its pretensions. But we are not 
to forget, that in Seneca's day reason had borrowed largely 
from evangelical instruction ; and that though still in captivity 
to the prejudices of sense, it had a field opened to it which 
carried its conceptions of divine things beyond the scope of 
philosophy, and the entanglements of the schools. 

The ancient philosophers were so divided in their opinions 
concerning the creation, and the first principles and sources 
out of which all things were first formed, that Cicero, after 
considering them all, is brought to the conclusion that ' even 
a divine understanding would be at a loss which philosopher's 
opinion to choose. What seemed certain to one had scarcely 
the appearance of probability to another ; and so equal were 
the reasons urged in support of contrary opinions, that we 
can neither know nor imagine whether this world was framed 
by divine counsel or not.' Everything but truth had its 
patron ; and well might Pythagoras change the name of wise 
men into lovers of wisdom, as believing wisdom itself to be 
unattainable by the human capacity. Nor was it unworthy 
of Cicero, after an anxious search into the tenets of the 
various sects, to end in the conviction that ' we only follow 
probabilities, and are not able to go a step further.' 

The juster notions to which Seneca had attained by parti- 
cipating, to some extent, in the general light which, in his 
time, had begun to diffuse itself through the whole range of 
human enquiry, make us compassionately regret his want 
of a correct acquaintance with the verities of the gospel, 
the vital knowledge of which might have given him a name 
to shine among the true lights of humanity. In the epistle 
to which we now direct the attention of the reader, the 
opinions of the greatest weight among the heathen philo- 
sophers, on the question of the first cause of all things are 
briefly set forth. He begins with the doctrine of the Stoics, 
who say there are two things from which all others are 



244 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

derived ; cause and matter : matter being inert and always 
continuing in the same state, unless put into motion ; and 
cause, or reason, giving a certain form to matter. There must 
be something from which a thing is made, and something by 
which it is made. Thus a statue requires something to be 
acted upon, and an artist to give it form. And such is the 
condition of all things, say the Stoics, who allow but of one 
efficient cause — that which makes a thing what it is. 

He next shews that Aristotle first divided cause into three 
heads: — the matter itself, without which nothing can be 
made, the maker, and the form. And then he superadds a 
fourth, which he calls design ; being that which invites the 
artist, and which he constantly has in view in the prosecution 
of his work ; and which he calls the cause, for which the 
thing is made. 

In the metaphysics of Plato, the exemplar or idea is intro- 
duced as a cause, by observing which the artist models his 
material. The maker of the world has in his mind the 
exemplars of all things ; and these are what Plato calls ideas, 
immortal, immutable, indefatigable. There are, therefore, 
according to Plato, five causes, — that from which a thing is; 
that by which it is ; that whereby it is what it is ; that accord- 
ing to which it is ; and lastly, the end for which it is made. 
There is, therefore, the Great Maker, who is God ; the matter; 
the form ; the exemplar ; and the end or purpose. Do you 
enquire what was the design of the Deity, — the exercise of 
his goodness, says Plato. He is good ; and being so, he 
cannot envy any good to his creatures. He has, therefore, 
made the world in the best possible fashion. 

After this summary view of these opinions of the ancients, 
Seneca thus proceeds: — 

Now, Lucilius, give me your opinion on these points. Say 
who, in your judgment, seems to hold the most probable 
opinion ; not who maintains the truth, but the opinion most 
like the truth. For to say who holds the truth, is as much 
as to say what is truth ; which exceeds oiir capacity. For 
my own part, I think that this heap of causes put forth by 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 245 

Plato and Aristotle, comprehends either too much or too 
little. For if that is to be reckoned a cause without which 
a thing cannot be made what it is, they have said too little, 
because they must then consider time a cause, seeing that 
without time nothing can be made. They must reckon 
i place,' too, a cause •: for if there were not a somewhere for 
a thing to be, it could not be. And they must reckon 
( motion' a cause: for without this nothing could either be 
formed, or come to decay. Without motion no art or change 
could operate or pass upon anything. 

But let us consider the proper subject of our enquiry, — one 
first and general cause. And this ought to be simple: for the 
element of matter is simple. Do we ask what is this ' cause.' 
It is operative reason ; that is, God. So that in my reckon- 
ing there exist not several and particular causes, but one only, 
on which all depend, and that is the efficient cause. You 
will say that form is a cause : for this the artificer induces 
upon his work. It is part only, not cause. Neither is the 
exemplar or pattern a cause ; but the necessary instrument of 
the cause : it is necessary to the artist as his chisel or his file. 
Without these art could not proceed. These, however, are 
neither parts nor causes. But you will say, the purpose or 
design of the artist, for which he enters upon his works, is 
surely a cause. Be it so; but then it is an adventitious, and 
not the efficient cause. Causes of this kind are innumerable. 
We are enquiring after one general cause. And in suggest- 
ing this the philosophers have not shewn their usual exactness. 
They have confounded the execution, with the cause of the 
work. Now, Lucilius, bring forward your opinion, or what 
is much easier to do in these cases, refuse to entertain the 
question, and leave us to ourselves, to contend with the sub- 
ject as best we can. 

But why, you will say, do you delight in spending your 
time in such enquiries, which clear the mind of no corrupt 
affection, nor expel from it any inordinate desire. The truth 
is, I exercise my thoughts on these topics to obtain rest to 
my mind. First I make myself the subject of my reflections, 



246 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

and then the world around me. Nor is this time so lost to 
me as you imagine. For all these things, if not subdivided 
and frittered away, or dissipated in vain subtleties, exalt and 
invigorate the soul ; which being pressed down by its heavy 
burthen, longs to be set at large; and return to the source 
from whence it came. For this body is the burthen and 
punishment of the soul. While this incumbrance oppresses it, 
it is in bonds, till philosophy comes to its relief; commands 
it to breathe awhile in the survey of the wide spectacle of 
nature; and then calls it from earthly objects to divine things. 
This is the true liberty of the soul ; this is her proper range. 
She escapes from her custody here, and draws refreshment 
from heaven. Just as artificers who are occupied in some 
minute work, which fatigues the eyes, in the scarcity of light 
which their shops afford, go forth into some open space 
dedicated to the recreation of the people, and there feast the 
eye with the clear light of day, — so the soul shut up in 
this gloomy domicile, seeks to be set free in open space, 
there to recreate itself in the contemplation of nature's mag- 
nificence. 

The disciple of wisdom remains fastened to his bodily 
frame ; yet as to the better part of him he may be said to be 
absent while he stretches his thoughts towards the highest 
objects. While in the flesh, as if bound by a soldier's oath, 
he looks upon life as his military service; and is so constituted 
as neither to love nor hate it. He endures his destiny here, as 
knowing that greater and nobler things are in reserve for him. 

Would you debar me from this general inspection into the 
material world, and confine me to view it only in parts and in 
detail. Shall I not enquire into the origin of the universe; 
who first reduced things into form ; who first separated and 
disposed all things lying in a confused and inert mass of 
matter. Shall I not enquire w T ho was the artificer of this our 
world ? by what intelligence so great and disorderly a heap 
was brought under law and discipline ; who collected what 
was scattered, distinguished what lay in confusion, and gave 
expression and beauty to what was hid in a medley mass of 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 247 

deformity ? Whence so great a light was spread around us ; 
whether it was the same as fire, or something more luminous. 
Shall I not enquire after these things ? Shall I remain for 
ever ignorant of my own origin ? Whether I am only once 
to open my eyes upon this world, or to have my being often 
renewed ? Whither I shall go after this life ? What man- 
sion is to receive my soul, when freed from the laws of human 
servitude ? Do you forbid me to hold converse with heaven ? 
Do you wish me to live with my head bent towards the 
ground? No surely, I am greater, and born to greater things 
than to be the slave of my own body ; which I regard in no 
other light than as a chain thrown round my native liberty. 
To fortune I offer my body, but there let her stop short ; I 
suffer her not to wound me through it. All that in me is 
capable of being injured is my body. In this obnoxious 
tabernacle the soul dwells paramount and free. Never shall 
this flesh of mine make a coward of me, or induce me to 
adopt any art or pretence unbecoming a good man ; never 
will I be guilty of falsehood from homage to this little perish- 
able carcass. I can when I please dissolve partnership w T ith 
it ; and while our union subsists it shall not be upon equal 
terms. The soul shall possess the entire dominion. In her 
contempt of the body consists her true liberty.' 

But to return to the theme with which I set out. The 
search into the mysteries of nature favours much this moral 
liberty, of which I have just been speaking. Truly all things 
consist of God and matter. God governs all things, which 
are gathered round him as their great disposer and director : 
but a far more potent and precious thing surely is He who 
makes, — which is God, than the subject of his workman- 
ship, — which is matter. What matter is to him, the body is 
to us. Let then the baser things be subject to the better. 
Let us be strong against adverse fortune ; and rise above the 
dread of external injuries, or chains, or poverty; and con- 
sider death itself as only the termination of one state of 
being, or the transit to another. I fear not to be no more, 
since that is only the same as not to have begun to be. Nor 



248 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

do I dread a transit, as wherever I go I hope to be in less 
narrow bounds than I am in my present state. 



The doctrine of Aristotle, and of the greater number of 
ancient philosophers, was the eternal existence of matter. 
They considered it impossible to admit of the making of any 
thing out of nothing ; and, consequently, regarded matter as 
co-eternal with the eternal mind. And though it clearly 
appears from the letter just produced, that the views of 
Seneca concerning the first great efficient cause were, by his 
partial acquaintance with revealed truth, raised a little above 
the more perplexed systems of heathen theology, he was yet 
unable to conceive or admit the creation of the world but as 
the product of two co-eternal subsistences — God and matter. 
Thus Seneca fell lamentably short of the incomprehensible 
greatness of the true God as the originating cause of all 
things, speaking the universe into existence by his simple 
decree. 4 His mind could not disengage itself from the shackles 
of sense, so as to mount in its conceptions to Him who brought 
essence out of nonentity by his mere volition; but that he 
entertained exalted notions of the Divine attributes is abun- 
dantly shewn in the above beautiful epistle. One cannot but 
perceive, however, that these apprehensions of the Divine 
perfections, though professed by him to have been drawn 
from the stores of ancient philosophy, did, in truth, come to 
him collaterally and consequentially from the christian revela- 
tion, which had in his time begun to diffuse itself over the 
whole intellectual world. Philosophy was trimming its lamp 
afresh, and lighting it at the fire of the sanctuary. Even in 
Seneca's day it had become the practice of the heathen phi- 
losophers and sophists, especially of those who copied from 
the Platonic model, to blend the lessons of inspired teachers 



4 He commanded, and they were created. Ps. cxlviii. 5. By the word of 
the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of 
his mouth. Ps. xxxiii. 6. 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 249 

with the dogmas of man's inventions, and to set up their 
new systems thus artfully compiled, and enriched with the 
spoils of Christianity, in opposition to that blessed dispensa- 
tion itself. 

While some were bending Christianity into subserviency to 
antecedent error, others, yielding to irresistible evidence, 
embraced the faith of the gospel, but yet retained their attach- 
ment to their mystic theology, so agreeable to the boastful 
pretensions of human wisdom, thus turning away from the 
simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus, and disfiguring their 
christian belief with a gross admixture of earth-born conceits. 
The speculations of Plato comprise the loftiest conceptions 
of Deity to be found in the compass of ancient philosophy ; 
but even in the system of that great man and his followers, 
the executive power and efficacious will of the Almighty was 
limited to act upon certain beings or essences of eternal 
necessity — certain relations ever necessarily existing in the 
nature of things, to which even the power of God was re- 
strained in its operations. In the highest conceptions to 
which the mind of man, untaught or partially informed by 
revelation, could ever attain, something was still supposed to 
be necessary and eternal besides God : and whether we turn 
to the dogmas of the Timseus, where Plato involves himself 
in his infinite, immaterial, immutable, and eternal essences 
or ideas ; or to that philosopher's archetypal models of the 
works of God in the divine mind, of physical or meta- 
physical entity ; or to the antecedent or co-eternal existence 
of matter, how do all these phantasies retire confounded 
before that mighty record of the world's beginning given us 
by the mouth of the prophet from God's own dictation, i In 
the beginning God created the heaven and the earth/ Here, 
in solitary grandeur, came forth to view the great majestic 
infinite first cause, of which the mind of all the philosophers 
were so long in search, and which no travail of human thought 
was able to discover. 

Amidst the various views prevailing among those ancient 
sects, there was no repose, no central stay, no point of union, 



250 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

that held the several classes of dogmatists together in their 
respective schools, no conformity resting on any commonly 
acknowledged principle : it was all vacillation, discordance, 
and tendency to division and subdivision. Sometimes in the 
prosecution of their vagrant reveries, they seemed to expatiate 
near the confines of truth, but they could never settle in 
consistency at any point, or arrive at any just comprehension 
of what man is, or what God requires. If sometimes they 
seemed to admit the creation of matter by the sole efficiency 
of the one Great Cause, 5 at other times they reasoned on a 
contrary supposition. If Plato and his followers renounced 
the eternity of visible and tangible matter, they still clung 
to the hypothesis of a world of incorporeal and ideal entities, 
which they placed in co-eternity with God, or made the 
partners or constituents of the Divine mind ; and sometimes 
even matter itself was deified, or endued with soul and in- 
telligence. 

Though the heathen Platonists did generally acknowledge 



5 Aristotle, in the first book of his Metaphysics, c. ii. thus writes, 6 re yap 
Bsog Cgkbi to ainov rrraaiv eivai kul ap%r] rig, a plain contradiction of his 
opinions given elsewhere. The statement of Hesiod has been much dis- 
cussed : 

Hroi [isv 7rp(A)TL<?a x a °Q ytvtT. Oeoy. 1. 115. 

It has been taken by some as a ground for assuming that it was the poet's 
opinion that the world was created out of nothing, which is to understand 
eyevero in the sense of syevvr]9rj. If it be rendered by factum est, or genitum 
est, then the question arises a quo ? Nihil enim fit sine factore. Diogenes 
Laertius, when giving the reason why Epicurus betook himself to the study 
of philosophy, says that Apolodorus the epicurean, in his Life of Epicurus,, 
relates that he left the sophists and grammarians, and applied himself to 
philosophy, because the sophists and grammarians could not answer his 
enquiry, what was the origin of the chaos of Hesiod. And the same thing is 
related by Sext. Empir. adv. Mathematicos, who says that Epicurus, when 
very young, asked a grammarian who was reading to him the said passage in 
Hesiod, from what was chaos derived, if it had a beginning ; to which ques- 
tion the answer given was this — that it was not the office of the grammarian 
to teach such things, but of the philosopher; and, accordingly, Epicurus 
went to the philosophers for the explanation of the difficulty. But his appli- 
cation did not seem to be attended with better success. 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 251 

one necessarily self-existent Being, the Maker of all things, 
yet, by a strange violence of metaphysical reasoning, they 
sometimes asserted matter, soul, and the substance of all 
things to be eternal, while at the same time they represented 
them as having only a derivative existence, and to have received 
that existence from God; being essentially dependent upon 
Him, as the sun's radiance is upon the sun itself. 6 The 
simple, unqualified proposition t>n which Moses bases his 
great authentic record was never substantially set forth in 
any school of gentile philosophy. 

The letter of Seneca on the value of time is full of spirit 
and .point. 

TO LUCILIUS. 

Act up to your resolutions, my dear Lucilius. 7 Assert your 
right to yourself and to your time ; and that which you have 
hitherto been used to see taken or stolen from you, or slip 
away of itself, treasure up and preserve. Be persuaded of 
the certainty of what I say. One portion of our time is 
snatched from us, another is silently withdrawn, and another 
runs away of itself. But the most disgraceful loss is that 
which happens from our own neglect. If you consider the 
subject, you will perceive that part of our existence is wasted 
in doing what is wrong, part in doing nothing, and part in 
doing what does not belong; to the business before us. Can 
you name the man who puts the true value upon time ? who 
regards the passing day as he ought ? who feels the solemn 



6 Proclus, the great maintainer of the eternity of the world and of souls, 
yet expressly declares that nava ipv%^ yevrjfia £<ri rov Seov. See Cudw. 
Intell. Syst. b. i. c. 4. 

7 Seneca's letters appear to be all addressed to Lucilius; concerning whom 
the little we know comes to us through these same letters. He appears to 
have been a person of mean extraction, and a little younger than Seneca. He 
became a Roman knight, and held a responsible charge in Sicily. He was a 
man of taste and talent, and in great esteem for his social virtues. 



252 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

truth — that he is dying daily ? In this we deceive ourselves 
when we look to death as altogether a future event. It is 
a process which is always going on, and has been in part 
dispatched. The by-gone period of our existence is already 
in the grasp and tenure of death. Do, then, my dear friend, 
that which it is my object in this letter to persuade you to 
do — lay fast hold on the hours as they pass, and make the 
most of them. Make to-day your own, that you may the 
less depend upon to-morrow. While we are procrastinating, 
time will not stop for us, but runs by us. We can call nothing 
of all things of this world our own but time. But it is a 
property of a fugitive and lubricous nature, from which who- 
soever is so minded can drive us from the possession. Such 
is the folly of mortals that they consider themselves obliged 
by gifts of the most worthless description, while no one 
thinks he owes us anything who borrows from us our time ; 
whereas in truth this is a loan which even gratitude cannot 
repay. 

Let me persuade you to begin in good time to be thrifty of 
your opportunities : for according to the wise old adage, it is 
late to begin to save when we are almost at the bottom — not 
only is that which is at the bottom the least, but it is also 
the worst. 



The way to read with real intellectual profit is a point of 
instruction not unworthy of the attention of Seneca. He 
passes in the following letter some very just censures on that 
roving habit of study which too commonly accompanies the 
ambitious pursuit of knowledge. In such cases a ready access 
to libraries is often a real disadvantage. The mind is apt to 
be dissipated and embarrassed by the concourse of oppor- 
tunities and facilities : in the endeavour to use these all at 
once, they are made so to crowd the path of the student, as 
to prevent any fonvard movement of the understanding — ipsa 
sibi officit copia. Anna inermem reddunt. The next letter is, 
therefore, worthy of being recommended to the attentive pe- 



LETTERS OF SENEGA. 253 

rusal of every young candidate for academical honours, or for 
general literary distinction. 8 

TO lucilius. 

From the letters you write to me and from other testimonies, 
I am full of hope concerning you. You do not run from one 
thing to another, nor keep your mind in an unquiet and 
migratory state by perpetually changing the objects of your 
enquiry. This changeableness is the restless and feverish 
tossing of the distempered mind. I consider it a principal 
evidence of a sound and well conditioned intellect, to be capa- 
ble of standing still, and abiding with itself. My advice to 
you is, to take care that the perusal of many authors, and 
many subjects, do not give a character of vagrancy and in- 
stability to the course of your application. It is important to 
remain long enough in converse with the particular produc- 
tions of certain good writers, to receive from them the nutri- 
ment they are capable of imparting, if you wish to extract 
any thing which may settle permanently in your own mind. 
He that is every where, is really no where. It is the fate of 
those who pass their lives in moving about from place to 
place, to experience hospitalities, indeed, but to form no 
friendships ; and much like this is the case of those who 
never so apply themselves to the study of an author, as to be- 
come familiar with his genius, but aim at acquainting them- 
selves with every thing that comes in their way as they hasten 
on in their rapid career. It is in vain that food is taken into 
the stomach, if it remains not there long enough to be digested. 



8 Lord Shaftesbury observes that it is not right to call a man well read 
who reads many authors, since he must of necessity have more ill models 
than good : and be more stuffed with bombast, ill fancy, and wry thought, 
than filled with solid sense and just imagination. Charact. vi. 142. And Sir 
W. Temple apprehends from it " the lessening of the force and growth of a 
man's own genius. The weight and number of so many thoughts of other 
men may suppress one's own, or hinder the motion or agitation of them, from 
which all invention arises." Essay on Learning. 



254 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

Nothing is so unfavourable to convalescence, as a perpetual 
change of remedies ; and if a wound is healed with a variety 
of dressings and ointments, the process of healing is sure to 
be interrupted and retarded. So neither will a plant flourish 
that is often removed. Nothing useful is of benefit to us if 
applied in this hasty and transitory way : and it is for the 
same reason that a multitude of books distracts the mind, by 
inducing us to hurry from one to the other, so as to become 
familiar with none. When you cannot read all you have, it 
is enough to have what you can read, without more. But, 
perhaps, you will say, I like now to turn over this book, and 
then another. But remember, a pampered stomach, by be- 
coming fastidious, loses its relish altogether, and that what 
turns to corruption can never afford nourishment. Confine 
your reading, therefore, to approved works, and if at any time 
you are induced to seek a short entertainment from others, 
come back I pray you to these again. Resort to those com- 
positions which will help you to bear poverty and death, and 
other calamities ; and after casting your eye over many, select 
one for the day which you may be capable of digesting. This 
is what 1 do myself. From the many that I turn over I fix 
upon some one. This is what I fell in with to-day, I found it 
in Epicurus. You are to know that I am accustomed some- 
times to steal into the enemy's camp, not as a deserter, but as 
a spy. Honesta, inquit, res est lseta paupertas. Cheerful 
poverty is an honourable thing ; indeed, poverty is no longer 
poverty when it is cheerfully endured. To be content with 
poverty is in effect to be rich. The poor man is not he wJwcIl 
has little, but he that covets more than he has. What does 
it signify, how much a man has in his coffers, or in his 
granaries, how he fares, or what usurious bargains he makes, 
if he sighs after the possessions of another ; if he overlooks 
what he possesses, in thinking of what is to be acquired. 
What boundary then, you will ask, ought we to put upon our 
accumulations ? Two. The first, to have what is necessary ; 
the second, what is enough. 



LETTERS OF SENECA. ZOO 

I will only extract a part of another letter of this great man, 
to shew how near his aspirations came to the highest stand- 
ard, in what respects the soul and its capacities. The classical 
reader will do well to turn to the original letter numbered cii, 
where he will find the noble ideas of Seneca expressed in words 
on a par with his ideas in force and dignity. 

TO LUCILIUS. 

A great and generous thing is the soul of man; reaching to 
the limits of a common intelligence with the Deity Himself: for 
first it has no locality, no country in this lower world : neither 
Ephesus nor Alexandria, nor if there be any other more peopled, 
or of larger extent. She embraces the universe in her circuit; 
— all this vault above us encompassing the wide creation of lands 
and waters, and the region of the air which divides and yet 
connects the habitations of God and man, and within which so 
many inferior divinities fulfil their several ministrations. Nor 
secondly, does the soul suffer herself to be bounded by any 
period of time. All years, she says, are mine. No age is closed 
against the entrance of great spirits, no time is impervious to 
thought. When the day shall come which is to separate this 
compound of divine and human, I shall leave this body where 
I found it ; and return to God : not that I am altogether 
absent from him now : but I am detained by this heavy earthly 
clog. This detention in mortal life is but the prelude to a 
better and more enduring life. As our mother's womb holds 
us in a nine months' confinement, preparing us not for a con- 
tinuance there, but for that place into which we are designed 
to emerge, when fit to breathe the vital air, and bear the open 
element, so in that space of time which reaches from infancy 
to age, we are matured for another birth : a fresh beginning, 
another state of things awaits us : we must pass through an 
interval of preparation before we can hope for heaven. Look 
forward then without dismay to that determined hour, which 
is the last to the body, but not to the soul. What things lie 
spread around you, regard them as the furniture of an inn. 



256 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

We must pass on in our journey. Nature casts us out of the 
world, as she once did cast us into it ; and so we come and 
go : we can carry no more out of it than we brought into it. 
And of that which thou didst bring into this existence, a large 
part must be laid down on your departure. You must be 
stripped of this skin, which will be your last only cover- 
ing. This flesh, and this circulating blood that pervades 
your system will be withdrawn from you ; your bones and 
nerves, the base and support of the less solid parts, will all be 
carried ofT. But that day which you now dread as the last 
of your existence, will be truly the birth-day of eternity. 
Be content then to lay your burthen down. Why are you 
reluctant? as though you had not before come out from a 
body when you came from the womb of your mother. Are 
you still reluctant ? it was not without a great effort that you 
were thrown upon this world ; you came weeping into it ; it 
was the lot of your nativity to weep; it had its excuse then. 
You came hither in utter ignorance and inexperience ; and 
when sent forth from the warm receptacle and shelter of the 
maternal covering, the free air blew fresh upon you ; and you 
were yet so tender as to be unable to bear the touch of the 
hard hand ; then in your ignorance of every thing, you were 
confounded by the multitude of unknown objects which sur- 
rounded you. But now to be separated from that to which 
you were before joined is no novelty. Dismiss, therefore, 
without uneasiness, these members which are no necessary 
part of you ; this body which has so long been your lodging. 
Let it be divided, destroyed, abolished. Why does the thought 
of this make you sad? it is the common destiny: so what en- 
velopes the new born infant perishes. Why love you so these 
things, as if they were your own ? they are only your outward 
covering. The day will come which shall take this covering 
from you, and make you come forth from your present un- 
clean quarters. Even now take your flight from them as 
much as you can, estranged even from those things which 
seem most necessary to you; fix your thoughts upon some- 
thing loftier and nobler. At some time or other, the secrets 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 257 

•of Nature will be revealed to you; this darkness shall be dis- 
pelled, and light shall break in upon you on every side. 
Imagine with yourself how great will be that effulgence, 
when so many stars intermingle their glorious beams ; no 
shadow shall cross that pure serene; on every side the heaven 
shall be equally resplendent. Day and night are the changes 
only of this lower element. Then you will say, you have lived 
in darkness, when whole in yourself, you shall see around 
you total brightness; which now you obscurely glance upon 
through the narrow vision of your mortal eyes ; and yet are 
filled with admiration at the distant sight. What then will 
be the effect of that divine illumination, when you shall see 
it in its own place ? Such a thought will not allow any thing 
sordid to settle in your mind ; nothing base, nothing ungentle. 
It tells us that the Gods are the witnesses of every thing ; it 
commands us to seek their approval, to prepare ourselves for 
communion with them, and to keep eternity in view ; by 
dwelling upon which, in our thoughts, we are raised above the 
dread of armies; no trumpet's sound can dismay us; no threats 
alarm us. What should he fear, with whom death is an ob- 
ject of joyful expectation? When sometimes even he that 
considers that the soul only lives while imprisoned in this 
body, and that at its departure hence it is dissipated and 
dissolved, yet strives by his actions, while living, to make his 
life a benefit to the world after his death. Although he is 
himself removed out of sight, his virtue and the honour he 
has reflected on his family is often and long remembered. 
Think, how profitable to the world are good examples, and 
you will acknowledge that the memory of great and good 
men is hardly less serviceable than their presence among us. 



With this extraordinary letter we take leave of Seneca ; 
and if its matter and character have left on the reader's mind 
the same impression which it has left on our own, the attain- 
ments and deficiencies of that great man will never recur to 
him without exciting emotions of admiration and pity. So 

s 



258 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

very near "the fountain of the water of life/' and yet perish- 
ing with thirst; moving " in the slippery ways of darkness " 
so near the walls of that seraphic city " which needeth neither 
sun nor moon, having the glory of God to lighten it." 

Notwithstanding the noble thoughts contained in his 
epistle, it is evident that the notions of Seneca concerning 
the soul's immortality were in a very unsettled state ; preg- 
nant neither with strong assurance nor rational hope. His 
sentiments, indeed, are gloomily grand, but they shew more 
of a gilded despondency than of a resigned spirit, or of a 
trusting patience. Much of what he says is summed up with 
beautiful brevity in the twelfth chapter of the book of Eccle- 
siastes : — " Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, 
and the spirit shall return unto God, who gave it." And in 
the fifth chapter of the second epistle to the Corinthians, the 
soul's spiritual longing to escape from the prison of the body 
is expressed in words which, while they are recognised only 
in the bosom of the real Christian, throw into the shade the 
bright but ambiguous aspect of Seneca's philosophy. " We 
are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in 
the body, we are absent from the Lord ; (for we walk by 
faith, not by sight ;) we are confident, I say, and willing to 
be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord ; 
wherefore we labour, that whether present or absent, we may 
be accepted of him." 

Yet, who can contemplate the anxiety of this great Stoic 
concerning the awful futurity that awaits the soul of man, 
without respect for the character of his mind ; or without a 
deep sense of shame at the comparative indifference with 
which so many nominal Christians seek behind the screen of 
this earth and its vanities, to shut out the prospect of the 
eternal world and its verities. " It is in vain/' says Paschal, 
" for men to turn aside their thoughts from this eternity which 
awaits them, as if they were able to destroy it by not think- 
ing of it. It exists in spite of them, nay, it approaches ; and 
death which will discover it, must in a short time infallibly 
reduce them to the dreadful alternative of being for ever 
nothing:, or for ever miserable." 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 259 

The lesson we may learn by looking into the philosophy of 
these magnanimous men of the Stoic school, and contrasting 
their errors with the opposite dogmas of the Epicurean sects, 
and again by contemplating the floating opinions which fill 
up the dark interval between these extremes, is very important. 
We see in these contrarieties the result of the sincere, but 
erring efforts of human weakness when left to itself, — the 
evidences of a state of being wherein greatness and meanness 
subsist in marvellous concord, — the proofs of a portentous 
change and disfigurement which pervade both the moral and 
natural world, — the lineaments of that likeness, in which 
man was created, blended with the marks of that forfeiture 
and degradation which ensued upon the first transgression. 
In these contrarieties in his character, these efforts to soar to 
the giddy heights of a self-trusting confidence on the one 
hand, and this alacrity in sinking into infidel sensuality on 
the other, we trace the revolution to which our species has 
been subjected. It is this confusion of contrarieties which laid 
the foundation, and supplied the materials of ail those be- 
wildering disputations which have vainly agitated whole cen- 
turies of the world's early history. The problem of original 
sin attainting all succeeding generations, how perplexing, 
how mysterious ! how opposed to our habitual notions of 
justice ! how far sequestered among the deep things of God ! 
It is a mystery which has been succeeded by that greater 
mystery made known to us by the testimony of God's word ; 
both waiting to be opened by " the keys of the kingdom" 
— those keys which can alone unlock the portals of grace and 
mercy — mystery upon mystery, together involving the mighty 
dispensation of the curse, the cross, and the reconciliation ! 
The mystery of our fall then is great indeed, and the mystery 
of the means provided for our restoration is greater still, but 
without these mysteries, man would be to himself the greatest 
mystery of all, made up as'he is of moral materials so opposed 
in their natures and tendencies; indicating at once the amount 
of the loss and the magnitude of the ruin. Whence came 
these contrarieties which exalted the Stoic, and made sense 
and concupiscence the law of the Epicurean? Is not the 



2G0 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

answer contained in the mystery which tells us of the image 
of God, once ours, but whereof only now the faint traces 
remain to make the sinfulness of sin more sinful, and to force 
our consciences to testify more loudly against us. 

Seneca having been long in favour at the court of Nero, 
was an object of jealousy and suspicion, and of course the 
subject of much misrepresentation. But if due respect is had 
to his salutary influence on the conduct of his imperial pupil 
during the first four years of his reign ; the weight of his 
character among his friends and associates; his instructive 
writings and discourses ; the dignity of his political life ; and 
the calm heroism of his magnanimous end, one cannot but 
conclude that there was in all this a strength of testimony on 
his side not to be overcome but by proofs much more explicit, 
and authorities much more decisive than those by which the 
assaults upon his memory are supported. During the reign 
of the first successors of Augustus, every demonstration on 
the side of virtue was as suspected as it was singular. The 
state of morals and manners was so utterly depraved that 
there seemed to have been something almost mysterious in 
the principle which held together the elements of civil union, 
and the most ordinary relations of mutual dependence. It may 
be, that much of this secret leaven, and conservative basis was 
attributable to the Pythagorean and Stoic principles which 
had penetrated the mass. Some qualities thus derived served, 
probably, to maintain the silent recognition of the necessity 
of a certain degree of order and restraint, and to keep the 
walks of men from becoming a forest for the savage passions 
to range in with unbounded license, and unmitigated fury. 

To find a Seneca in the midst of such universal degeneracy 
and corruption, may reasonably excite surprise, but it would 
have been more extraordinary if a Seneca bad in such times 
escaped the malice of slanderous tongues. Eminent virtue 
was treason in the reign of Nero. And a pretext was only 
wanting to bring Seneca under this charge. It was matter 
of easy contrivance. Informers soon implicated him in the 
conspiracy of Piso. The messenger of death found him at 
his suburban villa, with his wife Paulina, and two of his 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 261 

friends at supper. A few questions being asked and answered 
relative to the affair of Piso, enough appeared to satisfy the 
easy exigence of criminal justice, and to vindicate imperial 
vengeance. The tribune on his return was asked if Seneca 
was prepared to be his own executioner. " He shewed," said 
he, "neither sign of fear, nor dejection of countenance, when 
the proposal was made to him." It was enough, and the 
tribune was ordered to carry to him the emperor's decree. 

This tribune had from a conspirator become informer and 
public accuser, and being desirous of avoiding a meeting with 
Seneca, sent to him a centurion with the mandate; Seneca 
received it without fear or concern, and having been denied a 
tablet for his testament, in which he had hoped to mark his 
gratitude to his friends, contented himself with bequeathing 
to them in words the great example of his life : and after mildly 
reproving them for not restraining their grief, and repressing 
their tears, prepared himself manfully for death. He endea- 
voured to cheer his wife Paulina ; but on her declaring her 
determination to accompany him in this last passage, he thus 
addressed her : " I have pointed out to you the means of 
making your life easy ; but as you prefer the glory of a 
voluntary death, I will not envy you the privilege of becoming 
so bright an example. To meet our fate with courage and 
constancy is equally in the power of us both ; but yours must 
be considered as the more illustrious death." 

The veins of Seneca and Paulina were then opened by 
themselves; but the husband's torments being much aggra- 
vated by the state of his body, to spare his wife the pain of 
witnessing his agony he persuaded her to permit herself to be 
taken to another apartment. He was afraid also that with 
such a spectacle before her, her fortitude might be overcome. 
After the loss of much blood, the arms of the wife were 
bandaged by the emperor's command, and she was made to 
live for some time, carrying in her pallid countenance and 
languid body the traces of the suffering she had undergone. 9 



9 Tacitus adds, " Ut est vulgus ad deteriora promptum, non defuere qui 
crederent, donee implacabilem Neronern timuerit, faraara sociatee cum marito 



262 LETTERS OF SENECA, 

The departure of Seneca was very lingering. The effusion of 
blood was slow and reluctant from his attenuated body. 
Warm water w 7 as used for promoting the depletion ; but 
neither that nor a poisonous draught 10 which was swallowed 
by him produced the desired effect, till at length, he was suf- 
focated in the vapours of the bath, after delivering his dying 
instructions to those around him with his usual eloquence. 

It is hardly possible to dwell upon these last moments of 
Seneca without noticing the parallel case of the dying So- 
crates. The picture drawn by Plato is, indeed, rather 
softer and more shaded. The features of the great Athenian 
sage have rather a more cordial expression : but in the ex- 
hibition of mental composure, and courage above nature 
and humanity, Seneca is in no degree his inferior. The 
life of the condemned Socrates was to end with the setting- 
sun. The two great luminaries were to go down together. 
And the sun was now on the verge of its departure. Socrates, 
after dismissing his w 7 ife and children w x ith his last instructions, 
had retired to an inner apartment, whence, after having washed 
himself, he came out to his friends, and sat down, speaking 
but little. Then came the servant of the eleven, and standing 
near him, thus addressed him, " I have noticed in you, 
Socrates, what I have witnessed in no others in your cir- 
cumstances. When by the command of the magistrates I 
have announced to them the necessity of their drinking 
poison, they have loaded me with execrations. But you, as 
in other instances, so especially in the present juncture, I 
have found to be the most candid, mild, and altogether the 
best of those who have ever been brought to this prison. You 
give me the comfortable assurance, that with whatever dis- 
pleasure you regard those whom I obey, you look upon me 



mortis petivisse ; deinde oblata mitiore spe, blandimentis vitae evictam." 
Tacit. Ann. lib. xv. s. 64. 

10 Seneca, interim, durante tractu, et lentitudine mortis, Statium Annseum 
diu sibi amicitise fide et arte medicinse probatum orat, provision pridem vene- 
num quo damnati publico Atheniensium judicio extinguerentur, promeret; 
allatumque hausit frustra; frigidus jam artus, et cluso corpore adversum vim 
veneni. Tacit. Ann. lib. xv. s. 64. 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 263 

with none. Now, therefore, farewell, and endeavour to bear 
with all the fortitude you are master of, your unavoidable 
fate. To this Socrates answered, looking kindly upon him, 
farewell, we shall do as you say. And then turning to us 
he said, How gentle and courteous is this man. He has come 
to me often, and sometimes conversed with me. He is really 
the kindest of men. And now how benevolently he weeps 
for me- But let us do what he bids us. And let some one 
bring hither the poison if it is prepared ; and if not, let it be 
prepared. Here Crito interposed, " But, Socrates, I do not 
think the sun has sunk behind the hills, nor is yet set. I 
have known others to take the poison very late, after the 
necessity for so doing has been announced to them, therefore 
do not hasten; there is time yet. "Those to whom you 
allude," said Socrates, " have acted rightly, (for they may think 
that they gain something by thus acting,) and I shall act as 
rightly in not copying them. For I do not think it will be 
any advantage to me to delay drinking the poison. Come 
then, do what is required of thee." Hearing this, Crito 
nodded to the servant standing by, who went out and returned 
bringing with him the person who was to administer the 
poison, who bore it in a cup. " Come, my good friend," 
said Socrates, " you are skilled in these matters, tell me what 
to do." " Nothing more," said he, " than when you have 
drank, walk till you are sensible of a heaviness in your lower 
limbs; and then lie down," and so saying, he held out the 
chalice to Socrates, who received it cheerfully, neither trem- 
bling, nor changing colour ; but surveying the man, as he was 
wont to do, with a steady and somewhat stern aspect, (raupij- 
Sov,) " What say you," said he, " as to this cup, shall I make 
from it a libation, or not? " To which the man replied, " I have 
only mixed what is enough for you to drink." " I under- 
stand," said Socrates, " but certainly to pray to the gods that 
my passage may be prosperous, is both lawful and decent; I 
do, therefore, pray that so it may be." Having said this, 
he with complacency and alacrity drank the whole of the 
poison. This last act was followed by the tears and lamenta- 
tions of the persons present; till they were reproved by Socrates 



264 LETTERS OF SENECA. 

for their weakness. " I have heard," said he, "that it is de- 
sirable to go out of this life amidst felicitations and blessings ; 
therefore, be tranquil, I beseech you, and of good courage." 
We blushed when we heard this, and left off weeping. After he 
had walked about a little, he said his legs grew weary and 
heavy, and laid himself down on his back, as he had been 
told to do. At that instant the man who gave him the 
draught, touched him, and looked at his feet and legs ; and 
after pressing them asked him if he felt anything. He said 
he did not. Then ascending gradually with his pressures, 
he shewed him to us cold and stiff. Socrates also felt his own 
person, observing that when the poison reached his heart he 
should die. Then uncovering himself, he said, (and they 
were his last words,) " we owe a cock to Esculapius. Pay 
this debt, neglect it not." This Crito promised to do, and 
asked him if he had any other wish, to which he answered 
nothing. His countenance was fixed, — and Crito observing 
this, composed his mouth and eyes. 

So perished all that could perish of those illustrious men ; 
the one, the founder, the other, the follower of a discipline 
differing in mode, but similar in motive and principle, and 
framed alike for forcibly raising the mind to the loftiest pitch 
to which the rewards of present distinction and admiration, 
the dream of a never-dying renown, the triumph of conscious 
superiority, the pride of constancy, and the excitement of 
universal expectation could exalt it among men. What 
Socrates intended by his dying request to his friend to offer 
a cock to Esculapius, is variously conjectured. Some have 
thought him serious in this last act of his life ; others have 
considered it as an ironical expression of his contempt of the 
vulgar worship of his country : others have thought that by 
this tribute to the god of the healing art he obscurely inti- 
mated that death was to him the physician that cured all the 
ills of this life. 11 If it proceeded from superstition (SzutiSm- 



11 See the Socratic argument against the fear of death, un crj [xridefiia aioGri 
(fig ertv, «W bwv vwvog, iirii^av rig icaSevdiov //*7(T orap (irjdev 6pa> Sav/Jta- 



LETTERS OF SENECA. 265 

fiovia) from which on other grounds he has been judged not 
to be wholly free, 12 he surely would not merit a place among 
philosophers above the rank of the great Roman 13 whose 
letters have been the subject of this chapter. 

cwv icepdoQ av eir) 6 Sravarog. And again, ei ovv toiovtoq 6 9avarog effri, 
Kepcog eywye Xeyoj ArroX. Hwicp Xt. 

12 Socratem per canem, et nonnunquam etiam per anserem et platanum 
jurare solitum passim tradunt veteres. Cur vero id ageret, inter ipsos aeque 
non convenit, serio hoc alii factum, et ex deionSaifiovia, profectum existimant: 
alii vero ironiae Socraticae numinumque vulgo receptorum contemptuitribuunt. 
Conf. Lihan. in Apol. Socr. 665. 666. AttoX. Swicp. £. vrj rov kvvcl and $aid. 
v£. 6 skckttov daLfjiojv et seq. 

13 Seneca was the ornament of the latter school of the Stoic philosophy- — an 
improvement upon the more ancient form, which carried its tenets often to a 
wild and paradoxical extremity. The first platform of their system appears to 
have been laid by the Cynics, whose characteristic notions and habits were 
preposterous, arrogant, and grossly licentious. The sect of the Stoics after a 
period of declension was revived in a meliorated form in the reigns of the first 
emperors of Rome, after the blessed epoch of the Christian revelation. " Haud 
pauca Christianorum," says Brucker, "praecepta imitati sunt, ita tamen, ut 
mutato sensu salva maneret Stoici Systematis integritas." Inst. Hist. Ph. 
Per. ii. S. vii. The signal fortitude and magnanimity of Ceecina Paetus, 
Thrasea, and Helvetius, and of their wives, the two Arrias, and Fannia, added 
great lustre to the sect ; which maintained its credit until it was absorbed in a 
medicated and eclectic philosophy, in which there was a confused mixture of 
the Stoic, Platonic, Peripatetic, and other systems. After two centuries from 
the Nativity of our Lord, there seems to have remained no distinct school of pro- 
fessors or dogmatists of this sect. The school of the Stoics which flourished in 
Imperial Rome, began with Athenodorus Tarsensis, under Augustus Caesar, 
and appears to have reached its acme in the person of M. Aur. Antoninus : 
" et in hoc quidem maximo viro," says Brucker, " Stoicae Sectae vigor emar- 
cuit." The interval was graced by Musonius, Chaeremon, Seneca, Dio 
Prusaeensis, called Chrysostomus on account of his eloquence, Euphrates, 
Epictetus, and Sextus. 



266 



CHAPTER XV. 

LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

The letters of the younger Pliny savour of a period in which 
the Roman state was much altered from its condition in the 
days of Cicero. He held the same offices as Cicero, and a 
similar provincial command, but he held them under a master 
to whom he was expected to account for all the particulars of 
his public conduct. His opinions and actions were all under 
a superintendance, that kept the germs of any great qualities, 
if there existed any in his mind, from fully disclosing them- 
selves. His public attainments seem to have been either 
cramped or naturally diminutive in comparison with those 
of the great man whom he professedly imitated; — one, whom 
in Rome, Rome regarded as her patriot and preserver, and 
who in exile or in foreign command carried with him the 
genius of Rome wherever he w 7 ent. 

The letters of Pliny are, however, very full of good sense 
and entertainment ; and of a more domestic character than 
either those of Cicero or Seneca.. They shew the decisive 
marks of the gentleman and the scholar, and deserve great 
respect for their polished and social urbanity. They are 
replete with the topics and interests of busy and contem- 
plative life ; but they contain little to illustrate the charm 
imparted to letters by a free and unfettered choice of familiar 
words and imagery controlled only by the discipline of taste, 
the restraints of principle, and the awe of public opinion. 

We may infer from his complying with the request of a 
friend to make a careful selection of his letters, (from copies 
it is to be presumed preserved by himself,) that they were, 
for the most part, written to be read by others besides those 
to whom they were addressed. That he considered letter- 
writing a branch of composition to be specially cultivated 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 267 

appears by his letter to Prisons, in which, where he solicits 
the patronage of that military commander for his friend, he 
mentions among- the accomplishments of that friend, the very- 
elegant style of his epistles, " Epistolas quidern scribit, ut 
musas ipsas latine loqui credas." 

He observes, in writing to Ferox, that the composition of 
his letters was opposed to the representation he had given of 
himself as having discontinued his studies, since they dis- 
played an elegance in their style and structure, which must 
have been the result of continued application, unless he could 
boast of the peculiar privilege of being able to express him- 
self in so perfect a manner, without any mental effort or pre- 
paration. And in another letter to a friend, he declares in 
strong terms his admiration of the great elegance with which 
his letters were composed. 

There is a justness of moral taste and feeling in the letter 
which I shall first select as a specimen of Pliny's manner, 
with which the reader, if haply one of those for whose perusal 
this work was designed, is likely to be well pleased. It is 
calculated to brino; him at once into familiarity, I had almost 
said into correspondence with the letter-writer. 

TO MINUTIUS FUNDANUS. 

The manner of passing one's time at Rome is generally such 
that it is curious to observe how rationally any single day 
may seem to be employed, when, if we cast our view back 
over many days together, we shall find no reason to be 
satisfied. Ask any one, what have you been doing to-day? 
He will say, perhaps, I have been at the ceremony of taking 
on the toga virilis. I have been at a wedding or espousals. 
A friend requested my signature to his will, or another called 
me to a consultation. These things on the day in which you 
are doing them seem very necessary: yet the same things 
appear very trifling when we look back and take a collective 
view of what we have been daily transacting. Then the 
general thought occurs, how many days have I consumed on 
things of no value. This is a reflection which frequently 



268 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

crosses my mind, after a studious interval passed at my 
Laurentine villa; or even when I have been there for the 
improvement of my health, for the mind depends much upon 
the support it receives from the animal frame. Here I neither 
hear nor utter anything of which I have reason to repent. 
No one entertains me here with the whispers of calumny. 
Here I censure none, unless it be myself, indeed, when I am 
dissatisfied with what I write. Here neither hope nor fear 
agitates my mind, and no rumours reach me to trouble my 
repose. I converse only with myself and my books. O this 
peaceful life, so well ordered, and so sincere ! O this sweet 
and honourable repose ! having, in my opinion, something 
in it more graceful and pleasing than almost any active em- 
ployment. O this sea, this shore, this true retirement, this 
scene so suited to contemplation and the muse ! Of how 
many new thoughts art thou the inventor and inspirer ! 
Leave then, my friend, I beseech you, as soon as you can, the 
noise, inanity, and frivolous pursuits of the city, and devote 
yourself to study and retirement. It is better as our friend 
Attilius used sensibly and wittily to say, " to be wholly 
unemployed than to be actively idle." 



The character drawn in the next letter is interesting and 
affecting ; — interesting as exhibiting an amiable portrait of a 
heathen gentleman ; and affecting as shewing the gloomy 
barrier which stopped the procedure of the finest minds, at a 
point so far below their capacity of expansion, had Chris- 
tianity been their guide and conductor. 

TO CATIL1US SEVERUS. 

I have been long detained in Rome, in a state of the greatest 
anxiety. The long and obstinate illness of Aristo, for whom 
I entertain the highest admiration and affection, troubles and 
afflicts me. There is no one whom I can name, in whom 
dignity, virtue, and learning are more conspicuous. How 
great is his skill in the laws, both civil and political, of his 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLIXY. 2G l J 

country ! how deep is his acquaintance with its events, its 
characters, and its antiquities. There is nothing you would 
wish to learn that he is not qualified to teach. To me he is 
a treasury to which I resort when I want information on any 
subject of abstruse enquiry. What integrity and weight there 
is in all he utters ! How circumspect and graceful is his 
modest reserve in delivering himself. Though he sees in a 
moment the very point at issue, yet before he pronounces his 
opinion, he treats it under all its aspects and reasonings, 
tracing it from its first principles to its consequences and con- 
clusions. In addition to all this, how frugal his diet, his dress 
how plain ! When I enter his chamber, and view him on his 
couch > I see an image of ancient manners. And all this is 
commended to our admiration by the nobility of his mind, 
which does everything on principle, and nothing from ostenta- 
tion. He looks for his reward to the value of the thing per- 
formed, and not to the credit accompanying it. In short, there 
is not a philosopher by profession who can endure a compari- 
son with him. He frequents not the gymnasia or porticos, 
nor idly wastes in long disputations his own time or that of 
others ; but his hours are usefully passed in civil and active 
employments ; an advocate for many, and assisting still more 
with his counsel. But although thus actively engaged, to 
none is he second in the virtues of temperance, piety, justice, 
and fortitude. You would be full of admiration could you 
see with what resignation he bears his illness ; and combats 
with his pains. How patiently he endures thirst ; and how 
still and quiet he is under the treatment necessary for the 
reduction of a raoing fever. 

A little while ago he called for me, and some others to whom 
he was most attached ; and requested we would ask his phy- 
sicians what they thought of the probable result of his illness, 
that in case they deemed his disorder incurable, he might put 
a voluntary end to his existence. But if they only thought 
his recovery would be difficult and tedious, he would remain 
and endure the struggle ; for so much he considered to be due 
to the entreaties of his wife, and the tears of his daughter, 
so much to us his friends, that if our hopes of him were not 



270 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

groundless, he would not defeat them by a voluntary death, 
— a resolution, in my judgment, to be reckoned among the 
highest examples of fortitude, and meriting the greatest 
eulogy. For to rush upon self-destruction with a sort of 
blind and instinctive eagerness to be freed from our pain, is a 
resolution which we share with many ;, but to deliberate 
calmly on the subject, to weigh well the reasons for life, or 
death, and to decide according to the preponderance on the 
one side or the other, is the proceeding of a great mind. 

The physicians hold out cheering prospects to us. It 
remains only that heaven may favour these expectations, and 
thus relieve me from this painful anxiety. And if such relief 
shall be granted me, I shall betake myself forthwith to my 
Laurentine villa ; that is, to my books and studious repose. 
At present my attendance upon my friend, and the anxiety of 
mind I feel concerning him, leave me no moments for reading 
or writing. I have now set before you my fears, my wishes, 
and my ultimate determination. I shall expect in return an 
account of what you have been doins:, what you are now doing, 
and what you intend to do. But may your communications 
be more cheerful than mine. The anxiety of my mind will be 
much relieved by the comfort of hearing that you are suffering 
no present uneasiness. 



One cannot but lament that a letter distinguished by such 
good principles and feelings as that which has just been set 
before the reader, should be spoiled by a deliberate approval 
of the sin of self-destruction. Pliny was a polite, humane, 
and accomplished man, but his reasoning powers were not 
such as to elevate him at all above the standard of heathen 
ethics. 

Nothing, indeed, could more strikingly shew the comfort- 
less character of the ancient philosophy, than that the des- 
perate resource of suicide should by so many of its high pro- 
cessors be regarded as the legitimate hope, and final consola- 
tion of those on whom life and mortality had nothing but their 
dregs to bestow. It is true it was not the general opinion of 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLTNY. 271 

heathen antiquity 1 that suicide was lawful under any cir- 
cumstances, but there were few who would deny to the sick 
without hope of recovery the privilege of anticipating a lin- 
gering departure, and hastening the hour of deliverance. 
What better could be looked for from theological systems so 
defective in their adaptation to the entire predicament of 
man ; and coming so short of the span and compass of his 
being. They left him the sport of conjecture, caprice, and 
terror in all that concerned his unseen and ulterior destiny. 
Christianity has brought his immortality to light, and has at 
the same time surrounded the whole range of his existence 
with its sanctions, its precepts, and its promises. The noble 
testimony which is borne to its truth by its folding within its 
wide investiture our entire case and condition under all its 
modes and mutations, is too apt to be overlooked. Where 
the heathen theology lays its votary down, the victim of 
despair, Christianity takes him up, a suppliant for pardon. It 
makes his sorrow the forerunner of hope, and his pain the pre- 
parative to glory. This want of comfort in the theology and 
philosophy of the heathens was the determining motive with 
many of their zealous enquirers after truth, when the gospel 
had begun to diffuse itself, to visit the springs of its welcome 
intelligence. As soon as they began to quench their thirst at 
those fountains of living waters, they found their souls re- 
freshed beyond all their former experience, and their vision 
gladdened with new discoveries, before which the shadows of 
the old world were driven aw r ay and dispersed. 

The account which Justin Martyr gives of himself is a 
remarkable instance of the spiritual fruits of a conviction 
brought about by a succession of failures in seeking comfort 

1 Vetat Pythagoras injussu imperatoris, id est Dei, de prsesidio et statione 
vitae decidere. Cic. de Senect. sect. xx. 73. From whom Plato in his Phsedo 
borrows the sentiment. ' Gc ev rivi Qpovpa ecrfisv 6i av9p(07roi, kcli ov Sei dr) 
eavTov sk ravrrjQ \vsiv ovd' cnrodidpacrtceLv. We mortals have a post assigned 
us to guard, and it does not become us to release ourselves from this charge, 
and desert our duty. " Piis omnibus retinendus animus est in custodia 
corporis; nee injussu ejus, a quo ille est vobis datus, ex hominum vita mi- 
grandum est, ne munus humanum assignatum a Deo defugisse videamini.' 7 
Somn. Scip. 3. 



272 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLIXY. 

from other sources. In his dialogue with Trypho he relates 
his labours and researches among the oracles and sages of the 
gentile schools ; his toils through the learning of the Pytha- 
goreans, the Stoics, and the Peripatetics, in the vain pursuit 
of principles on which he could rest with no satisfaction, till 
finding in their ostentatious systems only disappointment, he 
made trial of the Platonist, whose lessons he studied in con- 
templative retirement. This new connexion pleased him well 
for some time, but landed him at last in a region of like barren 
speculations. For a long time he extended his enquiries only 
to multiply his defeats, till in his solitude he met with an 
aged and venerable man, who, after discoursing with him on 
the various lore of the philosophers whom he had so fruitlessly 
consulted, and convincing him of their inability to afford him 
the solace he was in search of, directed him to the Christian 
Scriptures as the true treasury of that heavenly wisdom which 
could alone speak peace to his soul. And this, as he tells 
us, he found, at last, to be the only sure and profitable 
philosophy. 

The letter which I shall next lay before the reader is of a 
very agreeable description. The comforts and compensations 
of old age have been often a favourite theme ; and though 
only he is qualified to represent them who has been " en- 
lightened ; and has tasted of the heavenly gift, and the good 
word of God, and the powers of the world to come;" the 
heathen mind has not been insensible to the importance of 
summoning to the aid of sinking humanity whatever solace 
could be drawn from the arguments and principles within its 
reach. The sentiments of the heathen moralists correspond 
in general with the melancholy shades of the picture presented 
to us by the chorus of the Hercules furens of Euripides. 

Old age, heavier than JEtna's rock, lies on my head? 
Nevertheless, even in heathen pages old age is sometimes 

2 to de yrjpag au 

Bapvrspov Airvag cricoTreXuv 

EtTI KOaTL KSKTai. 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 273 

pleasingly vindicated, and its advantages produced in strong 
relief;—- no where with more spirit and effect than in the 
treatise of Cicero on the subject. But in that most interesting 
performance greater stress is laid on the compensations and 
employments of age than on its graces and its comforts. 
These are the privileges of the Christian's hope, and flourish 
only where the gospel places under the aged head its downy 
pillow. Cicero's old man stands before us in an attitude of 
stout resistance to his destiny. " Resistendum senectuti est, 
ejusque vitia diligentia compensanda sunt; pugnandum, tan- 
quam contra morbum, sic contra senectutem." He calls 
upon his old champion to summon all the residue of his 
strength to the field of duty, and to keep in exercise his 
remaining energies of mind and body, till the last drop of 
life's elixir is consumed. " Old age is honourable," says he, 
" if it defends itself; if it insists on its, own rights ; if it 
refuses to be at the disposal of another; if to its latest breath 
it asserts its domestic supremacy. Thus did Appius Claudius. 
1 Four sturdy sons, five daughters, a great household, a nu- 
merous body of retainers, old and blind as he was, he main- 
tained in strict obedience. He kept his mind on the stretch 
like a bow. He suffered not age to master him, or extort 
from him a languid submission ; he preserved not merely an 
authority, but an empire over his family. He was feared 
by his servants ; revered by his children ; valued by all ; and 
in his parental discipline at home he maintained the severity 
of ancient manners.'" 

The Demonax of Lucian was a mellower old man : — " He 
lived to near a hundred years, without pain, grief, or disorder ; 
and without being burthensome or under obligations to any; 
was always serviceable to his friends, and never had a foe* 
Not only the Athenians, but all Greece, so loved and honoured 
him, that when he appeared in public the nobles rose up in 
respect to him ; and there was a general silence. Even in 
his extreme age he went about from house to house, supped, 
and passed the night wherever it pleased him ; the master 
always considered himself honoured as by some god or tutelary 

T 



274 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

genius. The sellers of bread would beg him as he passed 
along to accept of some from their hands ; and happy were 
they from whom he would receive it. The boys, too, would 
offer him fruit, and call him their father. On a sedition 
which broke out at Athens, his presence alone restored tran- 
quillity ; the moment he appeared all was silent : he perceived 
their shame and repentance, and without a word withdrew." 
The picture has a romantic air, and was probably overcharged. 
It is nevertheless very pleasing. But the letter of Pliny on 
the subject may be considered as containing the most agree- 
able description which heathen antiquity has bequeathed to 
us of the twilight of a firm and benign old age, casting a 
ruddy evening glow on the gathering cloud, behind which it 
cheerfully takes its leave, and retires from the scene of its 
labours and benefactions. 



TO CALVISIUS. 

I don't know that I ever passed a more agreeable time than 
I lately did with Spurinna. If I should live to be old, there 
is no man whose .old age I should be more ambitious to copy. 
Nothing can be more regular than his way of life. For my 
part, I am hardly more pleased with the settled course of the 
stars than I am with order and arrangement in the lives of 
men, especially of old men. In young men a certain con- 
fusion and agitation maybe permitted; but in the lives of old 
men, with whom the season is gone by for business and ambi- 
tion, all things should be calm and well ordered. This method 
of life Spurinna most perseveringly observes, and matters 
which we should think of little moment, were they not of 
daily occurrence, he brings within the circle of his periodical 
arrangements. The first part of the morning is passed in 
study on his couch ; at eight he dresses himself to go abroad : 
he takes a walk of about three miles': and exercises his body 
and mind at the same time. When he is at home again, if friends 
are with him, topics most worthy to engage the thoughts 
of accomplished persons are discussed and examined. If no 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 2/0 

friends are with him, a book is read to him ; and this is done 
even in the society of his friends, if it is agreeable to them. 
After this he reposes himself, and again a book, or, what is 
better than any book, he dilates upon some useful topic ; he 
afterwards takes an airing in his carriage, either with his 
wife, a lady of uncommon merit, or with some friend, as with 
myself very lately. How elegant, how entertaining is his 
company .in this hour of privacy ! What veneration he then 
inspires ! What events, what examples he brings before you ! 
What lessons of virtue you imbibe ! Although so tempered 
is his talk with modesty, that he never seems to dictate. 
After a ride of about seven miles, he walks again a mile ; he 
then returns home, and sits awhile, or takes to his couch and 
his pen. He composes Wricsj with the greatest taste and 
skill, both id Greek and Latin; and writes with surprising 
elegance, suavity, and vivacity ; qualities heightened in their 
effect by the reverence with which he is regarded. When the 
time for the bath is announced, which in winter is at three, 
in summer at two o'clock, hewperambulates in the sun, 3 
without his clothes, for a while, and then takes a long- 
spell at tennis, with which exercise he combats with old age ; 
after bathing he lies upon his couch till supper time, and in this 
interval some amusing book is read to him : and all this time 
his friends are at liberty to partake of this entertainment with 
him or not, as they please ; his supper is elegant, but frugal, 
served in pure and antique plate. He has likewise in use a 
sideboard of Corinthian metal, which is his fancy, but not his 
folly. His repast is frequently enlivened by the attendance 
of the comedians, that the improvement of the mind may be 
mixed with the gratification of sense, tn summer he en- 
croaches upon the night, but no one thinks the time long ; 
his entertainment is continued with so much politeness and 
courtesy. By these means he has preserved his senses in full 
integrity and vigour to his seventy-eighth year, and a boply so 
agile and vivacious as to carry no mark of age but its wisdom. 
This course of life is the object of my vows and anticipa- 

3 A practice customary with the Romans, being thought contributary to health. 



276 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PL] NY. 

tion ; and as soon as my age shall furnish me with an excuse 
for retreating from business, I shall enter upon it with the 
greatest eagerness. In the meanwhile I am worn down with 
a thousand cares and labours, in the midst of which I look to 
the example of Spurinna as my future solace. He too, as long 
as it became him, discharged public duties, presided in courts 
of justice, governed provinces, and earned his present repose 
by a life of great labour. Therefore I propose to myself the 
same course, and the same termination. And I now give it 
you under my hand and seal, that if you see me carried by 
ambition beyond this object, you may produce this letter 
against me, and lay your injunction upon me to be quiet, 
when I can be so without incurring the reproach of indolence. 4 



The portrait which the above letter exhibits of a happy old 
age is so pleasing, and so full of interest, that I cannot dis- 

4 Though the Appi us Claudius of Cicero, and the Spurinna of Pliny are 
greatly below the Christian standard, they rise in dignity far above the miserable 
level of our modern men of the world, when drawing towards the end of their 
nominally Christian course. It would be tedious and uninstructive to justify this 
observation by examples ; but an instance from the too well known letters of Lord 
Chesterfield to his son, may not be out of place here, for the sake of contrast- 
ing it with one or two specimens of a contrary character. It is thus that he 
writes from Bath, when age and infirmity begin to claim him as their victim. 

" The same nothings succeed one another every day to me, as regularly and 
uniformly as the hours of the day. You will think this tiresome, and so it is; 
but how can I help it ? Cut off from society by my deafness, and dispirited 
by my ill health, where could I be better ? You will say, perhaps, where 
could you be worse ? only in prison or in the galleys, I confess. However, I 
see a period to my stay here ; and I have fixed, in my own mind, a time for 
my return to London ; not invited there by either politics or pleasure (to both 
which I am equally a stranger) but merely to be at home ; which, after all, 
according to the vulgar saying, is home, be it never so homely." And in ano- 
ther letter written some few years after, he thus alludes to his weight of years, 
and the coming catastrophe : " I feel a gradual decay, though a gentle one, 
and I think that I shall not tumble, but slide gently to the bottom of the hill 
of life; when that will be I neither know nor care, for I am very weary." 

As an accomplished Christian gentleman, few have deservedly stood higher 
in the esteem and veneration of those around him than the late Sir William 
Pepys. He lived to a very old age with little decay of his faculties, or his 
capacities of mental pleasure; and it is thus he writes to Hannah More to- 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 277 

miss it without a few further remarks. Considered as a 
heathen specimen, it cannot but be regarded with a degree 
of admiration. However low it may graduate in the scale 
of value, when brought into comparison with the altitude 
of the Christian's hope and trust, it is surely far superior 
in honour and estimation to the " arm chair of dozing age," 
in which, according to Paley, " happiness is to be found as 
well as in either the sprightliness of the dance, or the ani- 
mation of the chase," or that " mere perception of ease," which 
the same author balances against "■ novelty, acuteness of sen- 
sation, and ardour of pursuit." This is not the comfortable 
old age which is conceived in the mind, and realized in the 
life of the waiting and contented Christian. The models of 

wards the close of his career : " As I have now accomplished my seventy- 
eighth year, you will not be surprised when I tell you that my thoughts are 
daily employed upon the great change which must inevitably soon take place ; 
nor do I find that the contemplation of it has had any bad effect on my 
spirits ; not from any confidence arising from a retrospect of my past life, but 
from the hope that the same gracious Being who has bestowed so many great 
blessings upon me in this life, will not withdraw his support and protection 
when I am entering upon another; but will comfort me when I pass through 
the valley of the shadow of death; not for any merits of mine, but for those of 
him, who is held out to us as a propitiation for our sins." In a strain of still 
deeper Christian interest, the Rev. John Newton opens his mind to the same 
Christian lady : " Surely He has done enough to warrant the simple surrender 
of myself and my all to Him. And now I am old, and know not the day of 
my death, my chief solicitude and prayer is, that my decline in life may be 
consistent with my character and profession as a Christian and a Minister ; 
and that it may not be stained with those infirmities which have sometimes 
clouded the latter days even of good men. May He preserve me from a garrulous, 
and from a dogmatical spirit; from impatience, peevishness, and jealousy. If 
called to depart, or to be laid aside, may I retire like a thankful guest from a 
plentiful table ; rejoicing that others are coming forward to serve Him, I hope 
better, when I can serve him in this life no more. And then at length when 
flesh and blood are fainting, if He will deign to smile upon me, I shall smile 
upon death. It is a serious thing to die, and it becomes me now far in my 
seventy-fourth year, to think seriously of it. Through mercy I can contem- 
plate the transition without dismay. There is a dying strength needful to bear 
up the soul in a dying hour. The Lord has said, ' As thy day, so shall thy 
strength be,' and ' my grace is sufficient for thee.' On these good words I 
would humbly rely, for, indeed, in myself I am nothing, and can do nothing ; 
and without his gracious influence I am alike unfit to die and to live." 



278 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

Cicero and Pliny shew, indeed, the animal and moral man in 
the act of summoning all his resources to palliate and post- 
pone what must be at last submitted to. Under the Gospel 
covenant, our case is committed to Him who can sustain our 
feebleness through the fearful and dark passages which lead 
to the last crisis, and to the crowning consummation of the 
final struggle. Holy Scripture affords the only safe precepts 
and patterns by which we may learn to grow old with a good 
grace. Under this dispensation, and under this tuition, old age 
becomes the harbinger of bliss ; hoary hairs are the blossoms 
of the grave ; the soul exults in the body's decay; and death 
is the entrance into life. 

The letter of Pliny relating the death of Silius Italicus is 
curious, shewing how an amiable man through the cloudy 
medium of heathen ethics could contemplate with approbation 
a self-inflicted death. It contains, however, such reflexions 
on the brevity of human life, as bring the topic home to the 
considerate mind. 

TO CANINIUS. 

I have just heard that Silius Italicus 5 has starved himself 
to death, at his villa near Naples. Having an imposthume, 
which was pronounced incurable, he determined with a reso- 
lution, not to be shaken, to seek refuge from a wearisome dis- 
ease in a voluntary death. To this concluding scene of his 
life he had been a very happy person, if we except the loss of 
the younger of his two sons ; but he left his elder and better 
son, in a flourishing condition, after seeing him attain to 
the consular dignity. It is true he lost some credit by his 
conduct under Nero ; being suspected of having been the pro- 
moter of informations in the reign of that Emperor. But of 
his interest with Vitellius, he made a wise and beneficent 
use. He acquired much honour by his government of Asia as 

3 Said to have been an ardent admirer and imitator of Virgil, though holding 
a far inferior rank as a poet. The second punic war was the subject of his 
poem, which was extended through many books, 



LETTERS TO THE YOUNGER PLINY. 279 

proconsul ; and on his retirement from office, he cleared him- 
self from the stains of his early life by an irreproachable be- 
haviour. He passed his time among the first men in Rome 
without power, and consequently without envy : lying much 
on his couch, and always in his chamber. He was much 
visited ; and court was paid to him for his worth, not his 
wealth. He passed his days in erudite conversation, with men 
of letters, when not employed in composing verses, which bore 
testimony rather to his industry than his genius. Some- 
times he recited his compositions, in order to take the opinions 
of his auditors. In his advanced age he quitted Rome al- 
together, and retired to Campania; nor could he be attracted 
from this retreat by the accession of a new Emperor, which I 
record as praiseworthy in the Prince who gave this liberty, 
and equally so in him who had the courage to use it. He 
was a great lover of the fine arts, 6 and was expensive to a 
blameable excess in his purchases. He had several villas in 
the same places ; always buying new ones, and neglecting the 
old ; in all of them he had large collections of books, many 
statues, and pictures, which he not only, enjoyed, but even 
adored ; but above all that of Virgil, the anniversary of whose 
birth-day he kept with more solemnity than his own ; espe- 
cially at Naples, where he was accustomed to approach his 
tomb with as much reverence as if it had been a temple. In 
this tranquillity he lived beyond the seventy-fifth year of his 
age, with a delicate, rather than an infirm state of body. 

He was the last of Nero's consuls, and was the survivor of 
all who attained to that rank in his reign, Nero having been 
killed in his consulate. And in thinking of this, a sad reflec- 
tion on the frail tenure of human existence crosses my mind. 
What is there so short and stinted as the longest life of man ? 
Does it not seem but yesterday that Nero was on the throne ? 
And yet not one of those who were made consuls in his reign is 
now alive. But why should I wonder at this when I look 
around me? Lucius Piso, the father of that Piso who was 

6 Erat (pikoKaXog ad emacitatis reprehensionem. 



280 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

most atrociously assassinated by Valerius Festus in Africa, 
used to say, he did not see one person in the senate who sat 
in the house when he was consul : so short is the space which 
encompasses so large a multitude of living beings ; and, there- 
fore, I think that the tears of Xerxes are not only to be par- 
doned, but to be fully justified, who is reported to have wept 
when he cast his eyes upon his immense army, and considered 
how soon an end was to be put to the existence of so many 
thousands. But if such is the short and perishable duration 
of life, so much the more are we called upon to give it what 
length we can ; if not by our deeds, which are not always de- 
pendent on our own wills, at least by our studies and the exer- 
tions of our intellects; and if it is not permitted us to live 
long, let us strive to leave some memorial to testify to poste- 
rity that we have lived. I know you need no incitement to 
what is virtuous; but such is the interest I take in your hap- 
piness, that I cannot forbear urging you to continue the course 
in which you have been proceeding, in return for the same en- 
couragement for which I have so often been indebted to you. 
How virtuous is the contention when friends stimulate each 
other by their mutual exhortations to pursue the path of 
honour and immortality. 



The letter in which Pliny has presented to his friend a 
minute description of his Tuscan villa is an interesting docu- 
ment, as directing attention to the indications it affords of the 
tastes, habits, and manners of Rome, as they appear to have 
prevailed under the beneficent rule of the Emperor Trajan. 
In the structure, adaptation, and decorations of the Roman 
villas, may be traced the progress and stages of the social and 
domestic refinement of that extraordinary people, among whom 
the greatest properties of human nature were under the mis- 
guidance of infatuating superstitions, extravagant errors, and 
a lofty but perverted genius. 

In the villa of Scipio Africanus we have a specimen of the 
domestic arrangements of almost the greatest man of the 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 281 

great days of republican Rome. Seneca, in his letter to Lu- 
cilius, describing a visit he made to this villa, contrasts it 
with the style and fashion of the mansions of the Roman nobi- 
lity of his own time; in which, however, it must be owned, the 
taste for splendour sought its gratification rather in sculptural 
and architectural magnificence, than in the petty display of a 
more showy decoration. " I write this," says Seneca, " from 
the famous villa of Scipio Africanus, 7 having first paid my 
devotions to his manes, and the tomb in which I suspect the 
remains of this great man were deposited. 8 Nor do I in the 
least doubt that his soul went back to heaven from whence it 
came. Not because he was the leader of great armies, (for 
that was no more than was done by the furious Cambyses), 
but for his excellent moderation and piety, which were more 
admirably conspicuous when he left, than when he defended his 
country. How can I but admire that greatness of spirit, with 
which he withdrew into voluntary banishment, and thus re- 
lieved the state from all apprehensions on his account; for 
things had come to that pass, that either liberty must injure 
Scipio, or be injured by him. I found his villa built of square 
stone, with a wood near it, enclosed by a wall, a tower on 

7 The first Scipio Africanus, whose ascendancy, arising from his personal 
excellence, and the greatness of his renown, made him the object of much 
jealousy and detraction. The efforts used to impeach him were met by him 
with a magnanimous contempt. He disdained to defend himself; and with- 
drew to his villa at Liternum, where he passed the residue of his days in the 
cultivation of his farms, and a noble simplicity of life. Major animus et 
natura erat, ac majorifortunae assuetus quam ut reus esse sciret, et submittere 
se in humilitatem causam dicentium. Tit. Liv. 1. xxxviii, s. 52. 

8 It had been said by some that Scipio died, and was buried at Rome, and 
by others at Liternum, and this made Seneca express himself rather doubtingly 
on this point. Alii Romae, alii Literni, et mortuum et sepultum. Utrobique 
monumenta ostenduntur et statuae. Nam et Literni monumentum, monumen- 
toque statua superimposita fuit, quam tempestate disjectam nuper vidimus 
ipsi. Et Romae extra portam Capenam in Scipionum monumento tres statuae 
sunt; quarum duse P. et L. Scipionum dicuntur esse; tertia poetae Q. Ennii. 
Liv. 1. xxxviii. s. 56. Cicero, in his Oratio pro Archia Poeta. " Carus fuit 
Africano superiori noster Ennius. Atque etiam in sepulchro Scipionum pu- 
tatur is esse constitutus e marmore, s. ix. ; and see the note to the passage by 
Manutius. 



282 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

each side erected by way of bulwark, a reservoir under the 
buildings, and green walks, enough to supply an army with 
water. A bath narrow and somewhat dark, after the ancient 
custom. 

" It was a great pleasure to me to reflect on the habits and 
manners of Scipio, in contrast with those of our own time. 
In this corner the dread of Carthage, to whom it was owing 
that Rome escaped a second capture, was wont to bathe his 
body wearied with his rustic toils ; for he daily exercised 
himself in husbandry, and tilled the ground with his own 
hands, as was customary with our forefathers. Under this 
low and sordid roof stood Scipio. Now a man thinks himself 
poor and vile, unless the walls are adorned with large and 
costly circular carvings ; unless the Alexandrine marble is 
coloured with Numidian plaster; unless a rich and variegated 
coating is spread like a picture on the walls ; unless the cham- 
ber is covered with a roof or ceiling of a vitreous substance ; 
unless the Thasian stone, once reckoned a rare ornament even 
in a temple, now enclose our ponds, into which we throw our 
bodies exhausted by perspiration; unless the water issues out 
of silver spouts. And as yet I am speaking only of what are 
for the common people ; but what shall I say when I come to 
the baths of the freedmen ? What a concourse of statues, of 
columns supporting nothing, but placed only for ornament and 
a vain ostentation of expense ! what fine cascades resounding 
in their fall down a series of steps ! In short, to such a pitch 
of delicacy are we come, that we can tread upon nothing but 
precious stones." 

Seneca proceeds with his subject, enlarging upon the sim- 
plicity, and even meanness, of the construction and furniture 
of Scipio's bath, and then rapturously thus breaks forth, 

" How delightful was it to enter these baths, dark as they 
were, and covered over with a common ceiling of mortar; 
which one knew that Cato when edile, or Fabius, or one of the 
Cornelian family had tempered with their own hands." 



After the lapse of another century, the costly extent and 
fashion of these villas spoke the change which had taken place 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 283 

in the habits of the Roman Patrician. The retreat of Lucul- 
lus exemplified the luxury and splendour of the great men, who 
had acquired in their various commands and provincial govern- 
ments excessive riches, often the fruit of rapine and oppres- 
sion. His library with his porticos and galleries for literary 
conferences, his gardens and groves and shady walks around 
his mansion, and his numerous apartments for the varied en- 
tertainments of his friends, were the admiration of his con- 
temporaries, and maintained their reputation through several 
generations of those that came after him. 9 

Cicero had many Villas, and some of them very sumptuous ; 
generally situated near the sea, at various distances between 
Rome and Pompeii, and so remarkable for elegance of struc- 
ture, and amenity of situation, as to be called by their dis- 
tinguished owner the eyes of Italy. His favourite seats were 
at Tusculum, Antium, Astura, and Arpinum ; in addition to 
which may be reckoned his Formian, Cuman, Puteolan, and 
Pompeian villas, with large plantations and gardens around 
them ; and other smaller retreats to serve as places of rest and 
refreshment in the journey to the more distant seats ; so 
numerous that some writers have enumerated no less than 
eighteen. His Tusculan villa, which once had Sylla for its 
owner, was the most richly adorned and furnished, as being 
the retreat nearest to the city, and most at hand when the 
fatigues of the bar or the senate made a speedy change of air 
and scene particularly desirable. But his more distant villas 
were sometimes preferable, as affording more retirement and 
tranquillity ; and at Antium especially, he kept his largest 
collection of books : but they were all constructed and laid 
out with much cost and elegance; some with porticos for 
philosophical conferences with his friends, and some with 
galleries for statues and paintings; in which Cicero appeared 
to take great delight. 

The description by Pliny of his villa, lying at the distance 
from Rome of about one hundred and fifty miles, and used by 

9 It was in these gardens, near Neapolis, that Messalina, the abandoned 
wife of Claudius C. was put to death. See the vivid description of this tragedy 
in Tacit. Ann. lxi. 37, 38. 



284 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

him for his summer, as that of Laurentinum was for his winter 
residence, is given in the following letter, with much minute- 
ness of specification, and some graphical vivacity. He addresses 
himself to Apollinaris, one of his intimate friends, 



TO APOLLINARIS. 

I was much gratified by the concern you expressed when you 
heard of my intention to go in the summer to my Tuscan 
villa ; and by your kind purpose of dissuading me from such 
resolution, being impressed with an idea of the unhealthiness 
of the situation. It is true that the air of the Tuscan coast is 
misty and unwholesome, but my house lies at a good distance 
from the sea, at the foot of one of the Apennines, where the 
air is considered as particularly salubrious. And that you may 
lay aside all your fears concerning me, I will give you an ac- 
count of the country round, and the general agreeableness of 
my residence, which it will please you to hear, and me to relate. 

The climate is cold and chilling in winter. It is unfavour- 
able to the myrtle and olive, and all other plants requiring 
a genial temperature. But it suits the bay tree, which is 
here seen in its most lively verdure, though sometimes, but 
not oftener than in the vicinity of Rome, it is destroyed by 
the inclemency of the season. The summer here is wonder- 
fully soft. The air is constantly put in motion, but oftener 
by a gentle breeze, than a brisk wind. Thence it comes that 
here you may see an unusual number of aged persons, grand- 
fathers, and great-grandfathers of the young men. You may 
hear their old stories, and the wise speeches of men of the old 
time, so as almost to place you in the midst of a former age. 

The scenery of the country round is exceedingly beautiful. 
Image to yourself an immense amphitheatre, such as only 
the hand of nature is capable of forming. A vast plain bounded 
by mountains whose summits are crowned with lofty and 
venerable woods, containing a variety of game. The declivity 
of the mountains are clothed w 7 ith underwood. Little hills of 
a rich earth, on which you would be troubled to find a stone, 
if you wanted one, are intermixed with these coppices, which 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY 285 

do not yield in fertility to the level lands below ; and though 
their produce is somewhat later, it is equally well matured. 
Under these. hills, vineyards on every side lie stretched out 
before you as far as the eye can reach ; at the end of which 
rises a grove of shrubs, forming as it were its border ; to which 
again succeeds a wide expanse of meadows and fields — fields 
requiring oxen of great size, and the strongest ploughs to 
break them up ; so tenacious is the glebe that it is necessary to 
give it nine several ploughings before it can be properly broken. 
The flowery and enamelled meads produce trefoil, and other 
kinds of herbage, always as soft and tender as when it first 
springs up ; and all this produce is nourished by perpetual 
rills. But though there is plenty of water, it never stagnates ; 
for whatever water the sloping land receives, without absorb- 
ing it, is poured into the Tiber. This river passes through 
the middle of the meadows, navigable only in the winter and 
spring, when it carries the produce of the lands to Rome. In 
summer it is so low as scarcely to deserve the name of a great 
river, but in the autumn it begins to resume its title. It 
would much delight you to view the region round from the 
top of the mountain. You would appear to be looking on a 
painted scene of exquisite beauty, such is the variety and ele- 
gance of outline wherever the eye happens to fall. My villa, 
near the foot of the hill, is so happily placed as to catch the 
same prospect which is seen from the top ; yet the acclivity 
by which you ascend to it, is attained by so gradual and im- 
perceptible an ascent, that you find you are on an elevation, 
without having been sensible of any effort in arriving at it. 
Behind, but at a great distance, are the Apennine mountains. 
In the serenest and calmest day we receive the winds that 
blow from this quarter, but spent and subdued before they 
reach us by passing through the space interposed. The aspect 
of a great part of the building is full south, and invites, as it 
were, the afternoon sun in summer (though somewhat earlier 
in the winter) into a portico of well proportioned dimensions, 
in which there are many divisions, and a porch or entrance 
hall after the manner of the ancients. Before this portico is 



286 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

a terrace walk, adorned with various figures, having a box 
hedge, and an easy slope, with the figures of animals in box 
on the opposite sides answering alternately to each other. In 
the level land below is the soft, I had almost said, the liquid 
Acanthus. 10 A walk goes round this area shut in with tonsile 
evergreens, cut into various forms. 11 This leads to 'the gestatio 
which is made in the form of a circus, with box in the middle 
cut into various shapes, with a plantation of shrubs, kept by 
the sheers from becoming luxuriant. The whole is fenced in 
by a wall, covered by box cut into steps. Beyond this lies a 
meadow as much set off by nature, as what I have been de- 
scribing is by art, which again terminates in other meadows 
and fields interspersed with coppices. 

The portico ends in a dining room, which opens upon the 
piazza with folding doors, from the windows of which you see 
immediately before you the meadows, and beyond a wide 
expanse of country. Here also is seen the terrace and the pro- 
jecting part of the villa, as also the grove and woods of the 

10 This has been supposed to be a species of moss rather than what we call 
bear's foot ; if it be not rather an Acanthus, of the kind of which Virgil speaks 
in his fourth Georgic : — Aut flexi taeuissem vimen Acanthi. 

11 If there is any invention or new art to which England has an undoubted and 
undisputed title, it is that of the pleasure garden. From the time, if ever the 
time was, when the garden of Alcinous bloomed any where but in the Odyssey, 
to the days of Addison, Pope, Burlington, and Kent, nothing had appeared in 
the world exhibiting those principles of taste, which in the early part of the 
last century, and principally under the auspices of the distinguished persons 
last above-mentioned, began their undisputed reign in this country. Among 
us these modes of torturing evergreens into fanciful forms, once the ambition 
of Cicero, Pliny, and Sir William Temple, are now in such contempt as to be 
below the notice of ridicule and satire. 

In those regions of the earth where nature is most boon, and pours forth 
her treasures in richest profusion, as in the eastern parts of the globe, the garden 
has been formed in absolute neglect of her lessons, and with a cold insensibility 
to her charms. In Italy, and in France, the same miserable taste in gardening 
has for ages prevailed. In the middle of the sixteenth century we find a 
Cardinal at Rome contriving a hanging garden to be suspended on the pillars 
of his mansion, with a folly hardly less than that of Nero, with his pastures on 
the roof of his golden palace. The tenacity of this false taste kept its hold for 
centuries in our own land. Neither in Lord Bacon's " platform of a princely 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 287 

adjacent garden walk, which has the name of hippodrome. 
Opposite nearly the middle of the portico, and rather to the 
back is an apartment which incloses a small area shaded by 
four plane trees, in the middle of which a fountain running 
over the brim of a marble bason refreshes with its gentle 
sprinkling the surrounding trees, and the verdure which they 
overhang. In this summer apartment there is an inner sleep- 
ing room which shuts out both light and noise; and adjoin- 
ing this is a common dining room, for the reception of my 
familiar friends. A second portico looks upon the little area, 
and has the same prospect as the portico I have just described. 
There is besides another room, which being close to the nearest 
plane tree enjoys a constant shade and verdure. Its sides are 
composed of sculptured marble up to the balcony ; and from 
thence to the ceiling there is a painting of boughs with birds 
sitting on them, not less pleasing than the marble carving; 
at the base of which is a little fountain, playing through 
several pipes into a vase, and producing a most agreeable 
murmur. From an angle of the portico you pass into a very 
spacious chamber opposite the dining room, which from some 



garden," nor in Sir William Temple's essay, which he has entitled " the Gardens 
of Epicurus," do we find more than the struggles of genius under the yoke of 
inveterate habit. The broad gravel walk, with rows of laurels, and a summer 
house at each end, was a leading feature in Moor Park, the scene of Sir William's 
elaborate taste; and though Lord Bacon ridicules the knots of figures, and 
other toys of the garden, he recommends the square form, encompassed with 
a stately arched hedge, to be done like carpenter's work, with little figures, and 
plates of round coloured glass, gilt for the sun to play upon 

The imagination of Milton could not endure these gaudy fetters. In his 
paradise nature is vindicated ; and it is not unlikely that to the homage paid 
to her by the great poet, she was indebted for the extension of her empire, in 
the next century, over the gardens and pleasure grounds of England. 

The spectator took up the cause of injured nature; and the paradise of 
Milton found a consecrated place in Addison's Pleasures of Imagination. To 
the clipped evergreens, and figures in box, yew, and holly, and all the verdant 
sculpture of the gardens, the 1 73d number of the paper called the Guardian, 
written by Pope, was little short of a sentence of proscription ; and his 
epistle to Lord Burlington helped further to put an end to groves nodding to 
groves, and alleys in fraternal rows. 



288 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

of its windows has a view of the terrace, and from others of 
the meadow ; while from those in the front you look upon 
a cascade which gratifies at once both the eye and the ear; 
for the water falls from a height foaming; in the marble bason 
below. This chamber is very warm in the winter, as it is 
much exposed to the sun. And if the day is cloudy the sun's 
place is supplied by the heat of an adjoining stove. From 
thence through a spacious and cheerful undressing room you 
pass to the cold bathing room, in which is a large and dark 
bath ; but if you are disposed to swim more at large, or in 
warmer water, there is in the same area a larger bath for that 
purpose, and near it a reservoir which will give you cold water 
if you wish to be braced again, on feeling yourself too much 
relaxed by the warm. Near the cold bath is one of moderate 
heat, being most kindly acted upon by the sun, but not so 
much affected by it as the warm bath, which projects further. 
This apartment for bathing has three divisions ; — two lie open 
to the full sun, the third is so disposed as to have less of its 
heat. Over the undressing room is built the tennis court, 
which admits of many kinds of games by means of its dif- 
ferent circles. 10 

Near the baths is the staircase which leads to the inclosed 
portico, but not till the three apartments have been passed ; 
and of these one looks upon that little area in which are the 
four plane trees, another upon the meadows, and the third 
upon several vineyards; so that they have their respective 
aspects and views. At one end of the enclosed portico, and 
taken off from it, is a chamber that looks upon the hippodrome, 
the vineyards, and the mountains ; and next to this is a room 
having the sun full upon it, especially in the winter. To this 
succeeds an apartment which connects the hippodrome with 
the house. 

Such is the face and frontage of the villa. On the side of it 
is a summer inclosed portico, the position of which is high, so 



13 Probably the balls were to be so struck as to fall within one of these 
circles, which might be variously disposed on the floors and walls. 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGEli PLINY. 289 

as not only to command the vineyards, but to seem to touch 
them. From the middle of this portico you enter a dining-room, 
cooled by the salubrious breezes from the valleys of the Apen- 
nines. From the very large windows at the back you have a 
prospect of the vineyards, as you have also from the folding 
doors, as if you were looking from the summer portico. Along 
that side of the last mentioned dining-room, where there are no 
windows, runs a staircase affording a private access for serving 
at entertainments. At the end of this room is a sleeping cham- 
ber; underneath this apartment is an enclosed portico, looking 
like a grotto, which during the summer, having a coolness of 
its own from being impervious to the sun, neither admits nor 
needs any breezes from without. After you have passed both 
these porticos, and where the dining-room ends, you again 
enter a portico, used in the forenoon during winter, and in 
the evening during summer: it leads to two several apart- 
ments, one containing four sleeping rooms, the other three, 
which in their turns have the benefit of the sun or the shade. 
The hippodrome extends its length before this agreeably dis- 
posed range of building, entirely open in the middle, so that 
the eye on the first entrance sees the whole. It is surrounded 
by plane trees, which are clothed with ivy, so that while their 
tops flourish in their own, their bodies are decked in borrowed 
verdure; the ivy thus wanders over the trunk and branches, 
and by passing from one plane tree to another unites the 
neighbours together. Between these plane trees box trees are 
interposed, and the laurel stationed behind the box, adds its 
shade to that of the planes. 11 This plantation forming the 

11 The description of the garden may be said properly to begin here, ex- 
hibiting a taste very different from that which prevails in our country in the 
improvement of our home scenery. There is, I believe, no other description ex- 
tant of a Roman garden ; which seems, however, in the time of Cicero to have 
, been an object of care and cultivation to some of the most distinguished men 
of Rome in their hours of retirement. We find much mention made of the 
gardens of Lucullus, and of other great Romans ; but we have no descriptive 
account of their principles or practice in the disposition or co-adaptation of 
their grounds for pleasurable effect. It has already been observed in a note 
to a celebrated letter of Cn. Matius, the friend of Julius Csesar, to Cicero, 

u 



290 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

straight boundary on each side of the hippodrome, or great 
garden walk, ends in a semicircle, and is varied in form; this 
part is surrounded and sheltered with cypress trees, which 
cast around a dark and solemn shade ; while the open day 
breaks in upon the interior circular walks, which are nume- 
rous. You are regaled at this spot with the fragrance of roses, 
while you find the coldness of the shade agreeably tempered 
and corrected by the warmth of the sun. Having passed 
through these winding walks, you re-enter the walk with its 
straight enclosure, but not to this only, for many ways branch 
out from it, divided by box-hedges. Here you have a little 
meadow, and here the box is cut into a thousand different 
forms; sometimes into letters, expressing the name of the 
owner, sometimes that of the artificer. In some places are 
little pillars, intermingled alternately with fruit trees ; when 
on a sudden, while you are gazing on these objects of elegant 
workmanship, your view is opened upon an imitation of natural 
scenery, in the middle of which is a group of dwarf plane 
trees. Beyond these there commences a walk, abounding in 
the smooth and flexible acanthus, and trees cut into a variety 
of figures and names ; at the upper end of which is a seat 
of white marble, overspread with vines, which are supported 
by four small Carystian pillars. 14 From this seat water issues 
through little pipes, as if pressed out by the persons sit- 
ting upon it; and first falling into a stone reservoir, is re- 

that Matius employed much of his time, after his retreat from all public busi- 
ness, in the improvements of gardening and planting. If, as is said, he first 
taught his countrymen how to inoculate, and propagate some curious and 
foreign fruits, he was certainly the author of improvements and benefits in use- 
ful culture; but if he introduced, as is also said, the art and practice of cutting 
trees and groves into regular forms and figures, no English gardener, nor, 
perhaps, any man of taste in the scenery of embellished Nature, will think 
himself, as far as the eye is consulted, under any obligations to the memory 
of Matius. See Columel. de Re Rust. 1. 12. c. 44. Plin. Hist. 1. 12. 2. 

14 Carystus was situated in Eubaea, (Negroponte) and is now called Garisto. 
It was from this place that the Romans are said to have brought the stone 
from which they made a sort of incombustible cloth, in which they wrapped 
the bodies of the dead, and thereby preserved their ashes from intermixture 
with those of the funeral pile. 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PUNY. 291 

ceived by a polished marble basin, its descent being secretly 
so managed as always to keep the basin full, without running 
over. Here when I take a repast, I make a table of the mar- 
gin of the basin for the heavier and more substantial dishes, 
the lighter being made to swim about in the form of little 
ships and aquatic birds. Opposite is a fountain which is in- 
cessantly sending forth and taking back its contents, for the 
water which is sent up to a height falls back upon itself, 
there being two openings, through one of which it is thrown 
out, and through the other absorbed again. 

Opposite the seat or alcove before mentioned, a summer 
house stands which reflects as much beauty upon the alcove 
as it borrows from it. It dazzles with its polished marble, 
and with its projecting doors opens into a lawn of vivid 
green. From its upper and lower windows the eye is greeted 
with other verdant scenes. Connected with this summer- 
house, and yet distinct from it, is a little apartment furnished 
with a couch to repose upon, with windows all round it, and 
yet sufficiently shaded and obscured by a most luxuriant vine 
which climbs to the top and spreads itself over the whole 
building. You repose here, just as if you were in a grove, only 
that you are not, as in a grove, liable to be inconvenienced by 
a shower. In this place also a fountain rises, but in the same 
moment disappears. In many places there are seats of marble, 
which like the summer-house itself, offer great relief and ac- 
commodation to such as are fatigued with walking. 

Near each seat is a little fountain. And throughout the 
whole hippodrome, rivulets run murmuring along, conducted 
by pipes, and taking whatever turn the hand of art may give 
them ; and by these the different green plots are severally 
refreshed, and sometimes the whole together. I should have 
avoided this particularity, for fear of being thought too 
minute, if I had not set out with the resolution of taking you 
into every corner of my house and gardens. I have not been 
afraid of your being weary of reading the description of a 
place which I am sure you would not think it wearisome to 
visit ; especially as you can lay down my letter, and rest as 



292 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

often as you think proper. I must also confess, that in this 
description I have been indulging the attachment I feel to my 
villa. I have an affection for a place which was either begun 
or completed, but principally begun, by myself. In a word, (for 
why should I not disclose to you my opinion, or, if you will, 
my error,) I consider it to be the first duty of a writer to keep 
his subject m view, and from time to time to ask himself what 
he has professed to write upon; and he maybe sure, that if he 
keeps close to his subject, he cannot be tedious; but most 
tedious, indeed, will he be, if he suffer anything to call him 
away, or draw him off from his subject. You see how many 
verses Homer and Virgil have bestowed respectively upon the 
description of the arms of Achilles and iEneas ; and neither 
of these poets can be called prolix on this subject, because 
he does no more than execute his professed design. You see 
how Aratus searches out and collects the smallest stars; and 
yet he is not chargeable with being circumstantial to excess. 
For this is not the diffusiveness of the writer, but of the sub- 
ject itself. In the same manner (to compare small things 
with great) in striving to lay before your eyes my entire villa, 
if I take care not to wander or deviate from my subject, it is 
not of the size of my letter which describes, but of the villa 
which is described, that you are to complain. But I will 
return to the point from which I set out with this digression; 
lest I should fall under the censure of my own rules. You 
have before you the reasons why I prefer my Tuscan villa to 
those which I possess at Tusculum, Tiber, and Praeneste. 15 
For in addition to what I have related concerning it, I enjoy 
here a deeper, solider, and securer leisure ; no calls of public 
business ; nothing near me to summon me from my quiet. All 
is calm and still around me ; which character of the place 
operates like a more genial climate or clearer atmosphere in 
rendering the situation salubrious. Here I am at the top of 
my strength in mind and body ; the one I keep in exercise by 

15 These seem to be now called Frascati, Tivoli, and Palestrina. All in the 
Campagna di Roma, at no great distance from Rome. 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 293 

study ; the other by hunting. ISfor does any place agree 
better with my family. Certainly, hitherto, (if it be not too 
like boasting to talk so,) I have not lost one of all those 
whom I brought with me hither, and may heaven continue 
to me this subject of self-gratulation, and this honour to 
my villa. Farewell. 



Such is the celebrated letter of Pliny describing to his 
friend the arrangements of his country house, the plan of his 
garden, and the general aspect of the surrounding scenery. 
If there is any thing in the letter to entitle it to distinct com- 
mendation, it is the stamp it bears of great good-nature, and 
a disposition to be pleased and contented. Neither a genuine 
taste for the picturesque, nor the delicacy of sentiment and 
feeling, which usually accompanies it, is discernible in the 
composition ; and perhaps, it was hardly reasonable to ex- 
pect to be listened to with untired attention by one's best 
friend, through such a circumstantial and prolix detail of 
matters appertaining only to one's own bodily comfort. The 
products of the intellect are interchanged with mutual de- 
light ; and there is always in the traffic of intelligent minds 
an interest in each other's gratification, that renders self-love 
the source and spring of a common enjoyment. But in the 
letter last produced, that the writer was occupied with a sub- 
ject too exclusive in its nature, to justify the prolixity and 
minuteness of his specifications can hardly be denied, what- 
ever sympathy his friend might be supposed to feel in his 
happiness. If the modern reader peruses the description with 
interest, it is on account of the opportunity it furnishes, of 
bringing into comparison the modes and habits of ordinary 
life prevailing at distant junctures, between which ages have 
elapsed, empires have flourished and decayed, generations 
have come and gone forgetting and forgotten, and an unseen 
hand has been conducting the silent march of change and 
progression. 

Our wonder is somewhat excited to find a Roman so polished 



294 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

as Pliny, in the midst of an original scenery so superb as that 
of Italy, with its purple valleys, its blue sky and mountain 
distances, maintaining in all its puerile absurdity the mon- 
strous system of coercing nature, and crossing her bold and 
beautiful designs with artificial dispositions, ludicrous imita- 
tions, and mathematical proportions. The truth may be, that 
there is implanted in the minds of men a desire of achieving 
what is difficult. It is difficulty that provokes enterprise, and 
thus furnishes the means by which it is itself overcome : it is 
an early and natural stimulus to exertion, and thence it hap- 
pens that the arts which are attainable only with effort, and 
are most elaborate, are the first objects of human assiduity. 
Architecture and sculpture, and the imitative arts, have been 
the study of early and almost barbarous periods, and to some 
of these little has been added by modern refinement. But 
difficulty is sometimes valued only for its own sake, and be- 
comes the aim rather than the incentive ; so that to accom- 
plish a thing because it is difficult is often the ultimate object, 
and has been one of the main causes of those departures from 
Nature, and those affectations in the science of ornamental 
culture, which have prevailed during so many centuries in 
defiance of Nature's dictates and suggestions. 

The following letter is affecting, and very creditable to the 
sensibilities and moral structure of Pliny's mind. It is ob- 
servable, indeed, that the expression of amiable and affec- 
tionate feelings is that province of letter-writing, in which the 
pen of this pleasing and instructive author is most success- 
fully employed. The young lady whose death he deplores 
is presented to us in so interesting a light, that, although we 
cannot sympathize with the writer in lamenting the decease 
of one who died so many centuries ago, yet a sentiment of 
regret crosses the mind in reflecting, that the person whose 
portrait is here so attractively set forth died in ignorance of 
that which consecrates a Christian's death. It appears that 
the young person depicted in this letter had all that a heathen 
could possess of what was fair and modest, dutiful and pure. 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 295 

Just pressing with her light footsteps the threshold of an 
earthly paradise, and in full progress towards the completion 
of her hopes in an honourable and happy marriage, she was 
hurried away in a few brief moments from human converse, 
admiration of friends, and parental love, to become a clod of 
the valley. These things, it is true, are of every day's occur- 
rence, but there are some things so substantially mournful, and 
touch so powerfully the inmost chords of vital feeling, that 
happen as often as they may, they never fail to interest the 
heart and stir its best emotions ; and even at this distance from 
the event, the rupture of ties, and those agonizing bereave- 
ments, which make a prominent part of the history of almost 
every family, where love and concord prevail, are made too 
painfully present to the mind by the recital given us in this 
letter, not to find an echo in the bosom of the reader. One 
would be apt to think, that there was nothing that we needed 
less to be reminded of than death, and yet there is nothing, in 
general, further from our thoughts; we are obliged, therefore, 
to this amiable heathen writer, not for making it known, but 
for making it duly felt ; not for proving, but for realizing the 
notorious truth, that in the midst of life we are in death ; and 
that the flower of the field is the most appropriate emblem of 
our brief existence on earth. 



TO MARCELLINUS. 

I write this to you in a state of great sadness. The younger 
daughter of my friend Fundanus is dead; than whom a young- 
person more agreeable and amiable, more worthy of a long 
life, I was going to say of immortality, I never have seen. 
She had not yet completed her fourteenth year ; but had the 
discretion of age, and the propriety of a matron, without 
losing any of the modesty of the virgin, or of the sweetness 
that belongs to tender age. How affectionately was she wont 
to hang on her father's neck ! With how much kindness and 
modesty would she caress us her father's friends ! How at- 
tached to all who had the care or instruction of her ! With 



296 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

what application and intelligence did she cultivate her ac- 
quaintance with books. How sparingly and guardedly did 
she take her recreations and amusements. With what for- 
bearance, patience, and fortitude did she support her last 
illness! To the directions of her physicians she was obedient; 
and while she did all in her power to infuse courage and 
comfort into her sister and parent, her own body, which had 
lost its strength, seemed to be supported by the vigour of her 
mind. This inward strength remained to her to the last verge 
of her existence, unbroken by the duration of her malady, or 
by the dread of death : all which occasioned her loss to be 
the more regretted and lamented. O sad and bitter event! 
more sad as taking place just when it did; for it happened 
when she was on the point of being united to a young man of 
. the greatest merit, after the day of the nuptials had been fixed, 
and we had been invited to attend them. It is impossible to 
express in words what a wound my mind received, when I 
heard Fundanus himself (as grief is sure to accumulate mo- 
tives to sorrow,) ordering the money he had destined to the 
purchase of clothes, pearls, and gems to be laid out in spices, 
unguents, and perfumes for the funeral. Fundanus is a 
learned and wise man, and from early life has devoted himself 
to studies of the most elevating kind ; but all he has gathered 
from lectures or books to corroborate his mind, is dislodged 
from his bosom by this great misfortune; and all his other 
virtues are absorbed by his filial affection. You will pardon, 
you will even praise him, when you take into consideration 
the greatness of his misfortune. He has lost a daughter who 
resembled him, no less in character than in countenance and 
expression, and bore altogether such a likeness to her parent 
as was really marvellous. 

If you think proper to send letters to him of condolence in 
this his extreme sorrow, so excusable when all circumstances 
are considered, let me remind you not to mix reproof with 
your consolation, or to treat him with any severity, but on 
the contrary, with softness and sympathy. Indeed, a con- 
siderable time must elapse before his mind will give access 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 297 

to any consolatory arguments. For as a fresh wound dreads 
the hands of the surgeon, but after a short respite submits 
with patience ; and at length, asks for the healing hand ; so 
the recent anguish of the mind rejects and avoids all attempts 
to administer comfort, but after a little time is desirous of it, 
and readily acquiesces in the relief, if applied with gentle- 
ness. 



The mind of this pleasing letter-writer seems to have been 
of the most humane and gentle cast ; nor is it easy to shew 
under the Christian dispensation, any model of a man of 
greater urbanity, or one in whose manners a more engaging 
flow of good humour, candour, sympathy, and kindness seems 
to have prevailed, if his familiar letters, continued through a 
course of years, can be considered as reflecting the real dis- 
position of the writer. He appears to have followed Cicero 
in many particulars, and, among others, in the adoption of his 
freedman as his most intimate, cherished, and confidential 
friend ; and his friendship for this person has all the appear- 
ance of being grounded on a perfect reciprocity of esteem. 
It is thus he writes concerning him to his friend Paulinus. 

TO PAULINUS. 

I know the humanity with which you treat your servants, 
and am emboldened thereby to make to you an explicit avowal 
of the indulgence with which I treat my own. I have ever 
ill my n\ind that verse of Homer, in which he characterises 
Ulysses thus: 

7rarrjp S' wg r^TTiog rjev. 16 

And I am no less pleased with the term used in our own lan- 
guage to express the same paternal principle, — paterfamilias. 

16 Odyss. B. 47. He was as a father mild. This fatherly mode of govern- 
ing a state, we must, in justice to the maxims of some of the wisest heathens, 
admit to be not unfrequently found in the remains of their political writings. 



298 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

But if my disposition were rougher and harder than it happens 
to be, the sickness of my freedman Zosimus is of a character 
greatly to affect me ; and I consider him now in his present 
circumstances as in a peculiar degree entitled to kind and 
humane treatment. He is a person of great integrity, very 
assiduous in his duties to me, well informed, and possessed of 
talent as a comedian, which is in a manner his profession, and 
in which he makes a considerable figure ; for he speaks with 
emphasis, justness, propriety, and grace. He plays well upon 
the harp, better than you would expect from a comedian. 
And such is the correctness with which he reads orations, 
histories, and poems, that you would think he had devoted 
himself entirely to the attainment of this art. I have been 
the more particular in giving you this account, that you may 
judge how valuable are the services which are rendered me by 
this individual. The interest I take in him, endeared by 
the long affection which has subsisted between us, is much 
increased by his present danger. Nature has so ordered it, 
that nothing adds so much to our affection, as the fear of 
losing the object of it;— a sentiment which this man has 
made me experience more than once. For some years ago in 
the midst of an animated recitation, he spit blood ; on which 
account I sent him to Egypt, from which place he lately 
returned confirmed in health. Having since that time upon 

Thus in the Cyropaed. lib. viii. Crysantas is made to express himself thus : 
rroWaicig /xev drj, a) avdpeg, kcli aXXore Karsvorjca on apx<ov ayaQog ovdev 
dicHpepei Trarpog aya9oo. " I have often observed that a good prince is in 
nothing different from a good father/' So in the laws of Charondas the 
government of a prince is compared to the rule of a parent. Apud. Stobseum. 
And see the speech of Tullius Rex in Dionys. Halicarn. Antiq. Rom. lib. iv. 
c. 36. wg 7cciT7}p Trpaog voig avrs ^pw/uroe. Seneca in his treatise " De 
Clementia" furnishes a full comment on what is above intimated. " Patrem 
quidem patrise appellavimus ' principem/ ut sciret datam sibi potestatem pa- 
triam ; quae est temperatissima, liberis consulens, suaque post illos reponens," 
L. i. c. 14. The same idea may be traced through many more heathen 
authors. The passage in Lucian in commendation of Cato is to the same effect : 

Urbi pater est, Urbique maritus ; 

Justitiae cultor. 

Pharsal. L. ii. 388. 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 299 

a certain occasion too much tried his voice for several days suc- 
cessively, he was admonished to spare himself by a return of 
his cough and spitting of blood ; on which account I have 
determined to send him to your farm at Forum Julii ; 1T having 
often heard you say, that the air of that place is very salubrious, 
and that the milk is very good in complaints of this kind. I 
request you, therefore, to give directions to your people there 
to afford him accommodation in your house, and supply him 
with what he may be in need of, which will be but little ; for 
he is so sparing and abstinent as not only to deny himself 
delicacies, but even such things as his health requires. I 
shall furnish him on his journey with all that will be 
wanted by one of his moderate habits, coming to be under 
your roof. 



The letters of Pliny to his wife are full of conjugal tender- 
ness, of which the following is a specimen. 

TO CALPHURNIA. 

I never had greater reason to be out of humour with my 
occupations, which would not suffer me either to accompany 
or to follow you in your journey into Campania for the re- 
storation of your health. At this time especially I had it 
much at heart to be with you, that I might myself observe 
what strength you are gaining, and what benefit you derive 
from the retirement, the amusements, and the plenty which 
the country in which you now are situated affords. Were 
you in good health, I could not bear your absence without 
great anxiety ; for to be at an uncertainty about one whom 
one loves is a state of anxious and painful suspense ; but now 
when you are not only absent, but in ill-health also, my heart 
is torn with a variety of doubts and alarms. I am agitated 
by all manner of apprehensions and suppositions, and as is 

17 Frejus in Provence, the southern part of France. 



300 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

the case generally with persons in that state, I figure to 
myself the evils of which I stand most in dread. For these 
reasons I earnestly entreat you to write to me every day, or 
even twice a day. I shall feel relief while I am reading your 
letters, though as soon as I shall have read them my fears 
will take fresh possession of me. 



Pliny's account of his uncle's death brings very strikingly 
before us a great natural phenomenon, but is principally in- 
teresting as exhibiting the elder Pliny, one of the most eminent 
and estimable characters of antiquity, under circumstances 
peculiarly illustrative of his great and distinguishing qualities. 



TO TACITUS. 



You request me to write you an account of my uncle's death, 
that you may be able to transmit a more accurate narrative 
of that event to posterity. I thank you for undertaking to do 
so; for I consider that an immortal glory will be shed round 
his death, if it shall be celebrated by your pen. Although he 
perished by a calamity which, involving in ruin a most beau- 
tiful tract of country, and so many populous cities, would of 
itself make his death for ever memorable; and although he 
raised for himself a monument by so many enduring works ; 
still to be recorded in your imperishable writings would secure 
still further the perpetuity of his renown. Those I pronounce 
to be in a happy case, who by the endowments of heaven are 
qualified either to perform things worthy of being recorded, 
or to record things deserving to be read ; but most happy are 
those who are endowed with both these talents ; in which 
number my uncle will be enrolled as well by his own works as 
by yours. I most willingly, therefore, undertake, nay, I invite 
the task you commit to me. 

He was at Misenum, being there with the fleet under his 
command, on the 24th of August, when about one in the after- 
noon, my mother directed his attention to a cloud of unusual 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 301 

size and appearance. He had just taken the cold bath after 
the usual exposure of his body to the sun, 18 and had retired 
to his study. He rose, and proceeded to an elevated spot to 
have the best view of the phenomenon. It was not ascertain- 
able at first by the spectators from what mountain the cloud 
issued ; but it presently appeared to be Vesuvius. 1 ^ 

The cloud was in shape like nothing so much as a pine 
tree; soaring aloft like the trunk of that tree, and then 
expanding itself in the form of branches : a form given it, I 
imagine, by a sudden gust of wind which carried it aloft, and 
then ceased to impel it ; or it might be, that it was stopped 
in its ascent by its own gravity, and so made to spread itself 
horizontally. It appeared sometimes bright, sometimes foul 
and spotted, as it carried up more or less of earth and cinders. 
Such a spectacle appeared to this man of deep and learned 
curiosity to be an object of great interest, and well worthy of 
a nearer inspection. He ordered a light vessel to be got 
ready ; and gave me the liberty of accompanying him, if I 
wished so to do. I answered that I chose rather to go on with 
what I was then occupied in studying, and it happened he 
had given me something to write for him. As he was proceed- 
ing out of the house he received a note from Retina, who was 



18 It has been before observed that it was usual with the Romans to anoint 
their bodies and expose them to the sun ; as contributing to their general health. 

19 This eruption of Mount Vesuvius happened in the year 79 of the Chris- 
tian era ; in the first year of the emperor Titus. Pliny the elder, whose 
proper name was Caius Plinius Secundus, of noble descent, was born at 
Verona. He acquired some distinction as a military commander, and held 
the rank and office of Augur, till he was appointed to the government of 
Spain. His labours in the accumulation of knowledge appear to have been 
at least equal to those of any writer of antiquity who has aimed at distinguish- 
ing himself by his attainments or by the value of his communications. He 
was deservedly loved and esteemed by Titus and Vespasian, and fully entitled 
to the encomiums of his affectionate nephew, being a person of great integrity 
and purity of life. He was, it must be owned, very credulous ; often deficient 
in taste, and fundamentally erroneous in his scientific principles and exposi- 
tions, and his works suffer much from the corruptions of the text. His style, 
too, though often spirited and vigorous, is far below the standard of the 
Augustan age. 



302 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

in great alarm at the danger which threatened her, her villa 
being at the foot of the mountain* and there being no other 
way of escape but by sea, praying his assistance to extricate her 
from her perilous situation. The purpose of his mind, which 
had been first excited by his philosophical ardour, now received 
the greatest additional stimulus. He ordered the galleys to 
be launched; and embarked in one of them, with the design 
of carrying aid not only to Retina, but to many others ; for the 
coast was thickly inhabited on account of its beauty. He 
proceeded immediately to the place from which others were 
flying ; directing his course straight to the point of danger ; 
so divested of all fear that he was able to make his observa- 
tions, and dictate his notes on the motions and various appear- 
ances of the impending evil. As he approached the mountain 
the cinders fell thicker and hotter on the vessels, together with 
pumice stones and black pieces of rock, broken by the intense 
heat. And now a sudden retreat of the sea exposed them to 
the danger of being run aground, while the shore was blocked 
up by the ruins from the mountain. Here he hesitated a 
little whether he should not turn his course back, that being 
the advice of the pilot, but presently his determination was 
formed, and saying to the pilot, " fortune succours the brave," 
he added, " carry me to Pomponianus." That officer was 
then at Stabise, separated by an intervening bay ; for the 
shore is winding and indented by the sea breaking into it. 
There, although the danger was not yet immediate, but full in 
view, and waiting only for a small increase, to be actually 
upon him, he ordered his luggage on board, determining on 
sailing when the wind, then contrary, should shift in his favour. 
Being now by a very favourable gale carried to Pomponianus, 
he embraced, comforted, and encouraged him. And that he 
might allay his fears by shewing his own sense of safety, he 
gave directions for a bath to be prepared for him ; and having 
bathed he sat down to supper with great cheerfulness, or at 
least with the appearance of it, which equally proved the 
greatness of his mind. In the meantime the places round 
were illumined by the wide conflagration, and towering flames 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 303 

from the mountain; the intense brightness of which was ren- 
dered more vividly glaring by the darkness of the night. But 
to soothe the alarms of his friend, my uncle represented these 
flames to be issuing from the burning villages deserted by the 
frightened inhabitants. After this he retired to rest, and fell 
into a most sound sleep ; for his breathing was so hard and 
loud, being of a full and corpulent habit and make, as to be 
heard by those who were without. But the ante-chamber of 
his apartment was so filled with ashes and pumice stones, 
that if he had remained longer on his couch, he would have 
been unable to make his way out. Being awakened there- 
fore, he went to Pomponianus, and the rest of the company, 
who had not been able to sleep as he had done. They then 
consulted together, whether it would be better to remain in 
the house or go abroad into the open fields ; for the houses 
were rocking to and fro with unceasing agitation ; and in the 
open air the showers of the pumice stones and ashes, though 
light, were to be dreaded. On a comparison of these dangers, 
the open air was preferred ; my uncle being directed in this 
choice by his cool judgment ; the others by one fear overcom- 
ing another. They carried pillows on their heads bound with 
napkins, which was their only defence against what was fall- 
ing around them. Now while it was day elsewhere, it was 
night of extraordinary darkness and density where they were 
situated ; which a multitude of torches, and lights of various 
kinds helped a little to dissipate. They thought good then to 
go out towards the shore, to see by a nearer approach to it, 
whether the sea might be ventured upon, but the dreary 
wilderness of waters was in too boisterous a state to receive 
them. My uncle lying down in the place where he was on a 
cloth spread for him, drank a draught or two of cold water, 
when the approach of the flames and the fumes of sulphur 
which went before them put the rest to flight, and obliged 
him to rise ; leaning on two of his servants he raised himself 
on his legs, and immediately fell down dead ; his breath, as I 
conjecture, being stopped ; and the passage to his lungs, which 
were always weak, and subject to a difficulty of respiration, 



304 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

being obstructed and closed by the dense and noxious vapours. 
As soon as light returned, which was not until the third day- 
after he had breathed his last, the body of my uncle was found 
entire, without injury ; and with his clothes just in the state 
in which he fell; looking more like one asleep than dead. 
During all this time, I and my mother were at Misenum. 
But as what relates to ourselves does not belong to this 
narrative, and what you asked for was the account of the 
manner of my uncle's death, I will here make an end of my 
letter. I will only add, that I have truly related to you all 
those things of which I was an eye witness, and which I was 
informed of immediately after the accident happened. You 
will select the circumstances which will be most for your 
purpose ; for it is one thing to write a letter, and another to 
compose a history ; one thing to write to a friend, and 
another to the world at large. 

TO THE SAME. 

You say the letter which I wrote at your request concerning 
the death of my uncle, has made you desirous of knowing 
what terrors and dangers I underwent while left at Misenum ; 
which I was just entering upon, when I broke off. Although 
the recapitulation renews my horror, I will begin. When my 
uncle was gone, I continued to employ the time which 
remained to me in the studies which had prevented me from 
accompanying him. Then succeeded the bath, supper, and 
an unquiet and short sleep. For many days before there had 
been observed a tremor of the earth, which had occasioned no 
great apprehension, as in Campania it is not uncommon ; 
sometimes shaking the public buildings, and sometimes whole 
towns. But the shock was that night so severe that not only 
were all things shaken, but they seemed to be on the very 
verge of destruction. My mother burst into my chamber, 
where she found me rising with the intention of awakening 
her, if asleep. We went out together into the court of the 
house, which separates the sea from the buildings. I doubt 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 305 

whether I ought to call my behaviour courage or rashness ; 
for I was only eighteen years of age. I took up Livy, and as 
if perfectly at my ease I began to read, and to make extracts 
as I proceeded. At this moment, a friend of my uncle, 
who had just come from Spain to pay him a visit; when he 
saw me sitting with my mother and reading, reproved her 
patience, and my careless security. Nevertheless, I con- 
tinued to pay the same attention to my book. It was now 
the time of dawn, and yet the dawn seemed to linger in 
suspense, and to open with a faint and dim lustre. The 
buildings around us were shaking, and though it was open 
ground where we stood, yet the place was narrow, and there 
was great danger of the tumbling ruins. We, therefore, 
thought it best to leave the town. The multitude followed in 
the greatest consternation, and what looks like prudence when 
men are distracted with fear, every one preferred another's 
suggestion to his own, and thronged and pressed upon us as 
we were making our way out. As soon as we were clear of 
the buildings we stood still, and then we were witnesses of a 
most wonderful and terrific spectacle. The chariots which 
we had ordered to be drawn out, though they stood on a per- 
fectly level ground, were tossed backwards and forwards, and 
could not, though supported by large stones, be kept steady. 
The sea seemed to be reabsorbed, and driven back by the 
convulsive motion of the land. The strand was extended, 
and many marine animals were left upon the dry sands. On 
the other side a black and horrible cloud, divided and broken 
by the tortuous and vibratory flashings of an igneous vapour, 
opened upon us with long trains of fire like lightning, but of 
greater magnitude. It was then that our Spanish friend, 
addressing my mother and myself with great heat and urgency, 
spoke thus : " If your brother, and your uncle be safe, he 
must wish you to be safe also ; if he has perished, it was his 
wish, no doubt, that you should survive him : therefore, why 
do you delay your escape from this place?" to which our 
answer was, that while we were doubtful of his safety we 
could not think of our own. Upon this he rushed out, and 

x 



306 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

setting off at full speed put himself out of the reach of the 
danger. And soon afterwards the cloud began to descend upon 
the earth, and to cover the sea. It surrounded the island of 
Caprea, and shrouded the promontory of Misenum. My 
mother then entreated and conjured me to save myself in 
whatever way I could. That as I was young it was very 
possible. That she was aged and infirm, and would cheerfully 
meet death, so long as she was not the cause of mine I 
on the contrary, refused to save myself unless we could be 
saved together ; so grasping her hand I urged her to go for- 
ward. She reluctantly complied, and went on reproaching 
herself for retarding my flight. The ashes now began to fall 
upon us, though as yet in no great quantity. I looked back, 
and beheld a dense cloud behind us coming fast upon us like 
a torrent. Let us, I exclaimed, turn out of the road whilst we 
can discern anything; lest if we keep in a straight course we 
shall be trodden down in the dark, by the crowd rushing for- 
ward in the same direction. We had hardly sat down to rest, 
when night came on, not such as it usually is when cloudy 
and moonless, but such as it is in a shut up place from which 
all light is excluded. Nothing was to be heard but the shrieks 
of women, the screaming of children, and the cries of men. 
Some were calling for their parents, some for their children, 
some for their wives; they could know each other only by their 
voices. These were lamenting their own misfortunes ; those the 
fate of their families and connexions ; some from the very fear 
of death were praying for death, as a deliverance from fear. 
Many were imploringly lifting up their hands to the gods ; 
some were beginning to think there were not any gods any- 
where ; and that the world was about to be lost in final and 
eternal darkness. Not a few aggravated the real by false or 
imaginary dangers. Some made it believed that Misenum 
was in ruins; and others that it was in flames. It now began 
to be a little lighter; but it hardly looked like the light of 
the natural day, but rather the indication of an approaching 
eruption of fire. And such in truth it was ; but at a greater 
distance from us. Then came on the darkness again ; and 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 307 

again a shower of ashes, dense and heavy ; and from time to 
time we shook them off, and emerged from them ; or we 
should have been covered with, and buried under them. I 
might claim credit for being able to say of myself that not a 
groan, or an expression of fear fell from me ; save that I did 
believe, (and such belief is a miserable, but strong consolation 
in this scene of mortality,) that the time was come when all 
things were to perish with me, and myself with all things. 

At length this dense darkness grew gradually thinner, till 
it went off into a cloud or smoke. And then the true day 
began to appear. Even the sun began to shine, but with a 
lurid light; as is its appearance when under an eclipse. All 
things seemed changed that met our trembling sight, being 
covered with accumulated ashes as if by snow. Returning to 
Misenum, and refreshing our wearied bodies, we passed an 
anxious and dubious night, between hope and fear ; but cer- 
tainly with more fear than hope, for the earth still trembled ; 
and many rendered crazy by their fears sported with the mis- 
fortunes of themselves and others by terrifying predictions. 
But as to myself and my mother, though we had suffered so 
much, and were expecting still more, we determined not to 
leave the place till we could learn the fate of my uncle. 

All this you will read with no view to insert it in your his- 
tory, of which distinction it is by no means deserving ; and if 
it should appear to you to be not even worthy of being made 
the subject of an epistle, you must blame yourself for having 
asked for the relation. 

TO PRISCUS. 

The ill health of Fannia 21 gives me great uneasiness. She 
contracted this illness while attending on Junia, one of the 



21 Fannia, the wife of Helvidius, was the daughter of Thraseas Psetus and 
Arria, which Arria was the daughter of Carina Psetus and Arria his much 
celebrated wife. Rome, in her republican or imperial grandeur, has hardly 
had to boast of a more renowned and remarkable family. 

The grand parents of Fannia were Carina Paetus and Arria. Pliny, in a 



308 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

vestal virgins ; of her own accord at first, as being her rela- 
tion, and afterwards by the authority of the priests : for these 
virgins when by any malady they are obliged to withdraw 
themselves from the temple are committed to the care and 
custody of some matron. In the discharge of which office 
Fannia was seized with this dangerous disorder, which is 
fever, attended with an increasing cough, emaciation, and a 
total prostration of strength. Her mind and spirits still main- 
letter to Nepos, the sixteenth of the third book, relates two or three striking 
anecdotes of the elder Arria and her husband ; but that which was the subject 
of the well known epigram of Martial, has given a lasting name to the heroic 
wife. When Caecina's death was decreed, and the Imperial mandate was 
sent to him, giving him the option of dying by the sword or by poison, the 
letter came first into the hands of Arria ; on which she immediately resolved 
not to survive her husband. When he came to her, he found her with the 
tyrant's letter in one hand, and a dagger in the other. On his approach, she 
gave him the order, and at the same time stabbing herself, " Paetus," she said, 
" it is not painful," and expired ; and the husband forthwith followed her ex- 
ample. The story is variously told. But according to Pliny, Scribonianus 
had taken up arms in Illyria against Claudius, where he lost his life ; and 
Paetus, who had joined him, was brought prisoner to Rome, and condemned 
to death. According to the paper in the Tatler, written by Steele, No. 72, 
Caecina Paetus was condemned under Nero. In the main point of the story 
all accounts agree, and the fame of the lady has received the seal of its per- 
petuity from the hand of Martial, whose lines are as follow : — 

Casta suo gladium cum traderet Arria Paeto, 

Quem de visceribus traxerat ipsa suis ; 
Si qua fides, vulnus quod feci non dolet, inquit; 

Sed quod tu facies, hoc mihi, Paete, dolet. 

But the memory of the deed owes something also to the sculptor's art. In the 
pleasure house belonging to the Villa Ludovisa at Rome, there is a fine statue 
representing the action. Paetus is stabbing himself with one hand, and holding 
up the dying Arria with the other. Her sinking body hangs so loose that every 
joint appears to be relaxed. Wright's Travels, 334. 

Arria, the daughter of Caecina Paetus and his celebrated wife, was married 
to Thraseas Paetus, whose character and death under the Emperor Nero is so 
afFectingly recorded in the 16th book of Tacitus's Annals. No one who has 
read the winding up by that historian of the fatal catalogue of Nero's butcheries, 
or the tragical end of Thraseas and Soranus, without a feeling like the sadness 
of recent sorrow, sd vivacious is the picture there given us. The fine introduc- 
tion of the narrative in which the particulars are presented to us, is in the re- 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 309 

tain their vigour; worthy of her husband Helvidius, and her 
father Thraseas. In other respects she sinks fast ; so that I 
am not only in fear for her, but am in great sorrow : and the 
principal cause of my grief is this — that a woman is about to 
be withdrawn from the eyes of the Roman state, whose equal 
I doubt whether it will be its lot again to contemplate. How 
eminent is her chastity, her sanctity, her dignity, her con- 
stancy ! Twice has she followed her husband into exile. Ano 

collection of every scholar. {i Trucidatis tot insignibus viris, ad postremum 
Nero virtutem ipsam exscindere concupivit, interfecto Thrasea Pano et Barea 
Sorano, olim utrisque infensus ; et accedentibus causis in Thraseam," &c. 

The termination of the life of Thraseas was very similar to that of Seneca. 
The Quaestor with the message of death came to that illustrious Senator while 
in the gardens of his Villa, at the decline of the day ; where he was found sur- 
rounded by an assemblage of many dignified characters of both sexes, engaged 
in attending to the expositions of Demetrius, a teacher of the Cynic dogmas ; 
whose discourse at that time was upon the nature of the Soul, and its existence 
in a state of separation from the body. His friends began to testify their sorrow, 
at hearing the sentence against him, by their tears, for which he reproved them; 
and, in particular, dissuaded his wife from the resolution she had at first formed 
to imitate the example of Arria her mother, that she might not leave their 
daughter without parental protection. Then leading Demetrius and his son- 
in-law Helvidius into his chamber, he opened the veins of either arm, and 
telling his son-in-law to look on, as these were times in which it was expedient 
to strengthen the mind by the contemplation of examples of constancy, he re- 
signed himself to a slow and painful departure. 

Helvidius Priscus, the husband of the subject of this epistle of Pliny, was 
sent into banishment under the reign of Vespasian, for his refractory repub- 
licanism. Suetonius, after remarking that no innocent person was put to 
death under this reign, except where Vespasian himself was either absent and 
ignorant of the case, or was under an erroneous impression from false repre- 
sentations ; thus relates the end of Helvidius Priscus. On his return from his 
government in Syria, he refused to salute Vespasian as Caesar; and, while 
Praetor, omitted even the mention of his name in his edicts. It was not, how- 
ever till, in a violent dispute which took place between them, the unbending 
republican treated the Emperor as his equal, that he was sent into exile. An 
order followed for his execution, but the Emperor soon repented of this severity, 
and sent messengers after him to revoke the sentence. The message of mercy 
was ineffectual. A false report was brought to the Emperor that the sentence 
had been already executed, and Helvidius was sacrificed to the malice of his 
enemies. Thraseas and Helvidius were both made for other times, and were 
equally incapable of submitting to the course of events, or of bringing back 
the ancient order of things. 



310 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

ther time she herself was banished on her husband's account. 
For Senecio, when he was tried for writing the life of Helvi- 
dius, having said in his defence that he had been requested 
to undertake that work by Fannia ; Metius Carus, having 
asked her in a menacing manner, whether she had made that 
request, she answered, I did so request him; and then, whe- 
ther she had furnished him with materials for his work ; and 
whether she had so done with the privity of her mother; she 
admitted her own part in that transaction, but affirmed her 
mother's ignorance of it. In short, not a word escaped her 
which betrayed the smallest emotion of fear. She dared even 
to preserve a copy of those very books, which the Senate, 
from necessity, and the terror excited by the state of the 
times, had ordered to be suppressed ; while they decreed the 
confiscation of the property of the author. She took with her 
in her exile the cause of it. 

How agreeable is this same person in her manners, how 
affable,how amiable as well as venerable, — an union of qualities 
how rarely found ! she will be hereafter the model to be pro- 
posed to our wives for their imitation ; and to which our own 
sex may look for an example of fortitude : whom while we 
have the happiness of a personal intercourse with her, both 
seeing and hearing her, we yet regard with the same admira- 
tion as that which we feel in reading of those who are cele- 
brated in story. And, indeed, for my own part I cannot but 
dread the fate of that illustrious house as in danger of being 
shaken and convulsed to its very foundation, notwithstanding 
there are descendants which promise a continuance of the 
succession ; for what must be their virtues, and their actions, 
to prevent us from considering her as the last of the family. 
To me it is most distressing and harassing to reflect that in 
her I am, as it were — a second time losing her mother — the 
mother worthy of so admirable a person, (and what more in 
her praise can I utter) whom, as she was restored to me in her 
daughter, so will she be again taken from me with her, and 
thus my grief will be repeated, and my wound will be opened 
afresh. I have venerated both : I have loved both : which of 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 311 

the two I more loved I cannot say ; they never wished to be 
separately thought of. I was devoted to them in their pros- 
perity, and no less so in their misfortunes. I was their com- 
forter in their exile ; and on their return, the vindicator of 
their innocence. But I did not, because I could not, do all 
for them that they were worthy of, and that consideration 
makes me the more anxious for the preservation of Fannia — 
that I may yet have the opportunity of discharging my obli- 
gations. It is in this very anxious state of mind that I now 
write to you : which anxiety should heaven turn into joy, I 
shall not regret the alarm under which 1 have been suffering. 

TO PATERNUS. 

I have been much afflicted of late by the illnesses and even 
deaths, and of the young too, which have taken place among 
my domestics. This calamity is attended, however, with tw T o 
consolations, which, though by no means a balance to my 
great grief, are still consolations. One is, that I have made 
it easy to them to obtain their freedom, (for I hardly think 
they have died prematurely, who have previously been re- 
leased from servitude ;) another, that I have been in the habit 
of allowing them in a manner, to make their wills, which I 
hold in as much respect as if they were good in law. They 
give such directions, and make such requests as they please, 
and I attend to them without delay. They make what dis- 
tribution they will among their relations and friends, so long 
as they confine it to such as are in the house, for to my ser- 
vants I consider my house as their commonwealth. But, al- 
though, my sorrow is somewhat assuaged by these considera- 
tions, yet the very feeling of tenderness, which has induced 
me to permit this to be done, will account for my being so 
overpowered by sorrow on this occasion; and yet I would not, 
therefore, have a heart less disposed to sympathy. I am well 
aware that others regard these cases as only so much loss ; 
and they think that to look upon them in this light shews 
them to be great and wise men. Whether, with such a dis- 



312 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

position they are great and wise men, I know not; but they 
are not men : for it is the part of a man to sorrow and to feel 
as a man ; to bear up against misfortune, but to admit, and 
not to be in no need of solace. But of this perhaps I have 
said more than I ought, though less than I wished, for there 
is a certain pleasure in giving utterance to one's grief; espe- 
cially when one pours one's sorrow into the bosom of a friend, 
who will commend one's tears, or at least pardon them. 



The specimen which the last letter furnishes of the good 
nature and humanity of the writer, is in the most agreeable 
harmony with that to which the reader's attention is next in- 
vited. I introduce the following letter as affording a parallel, 
or rather contrast to that of St. Paul to Philemon, which last- 
mentioned letter, is well entitled to take its rank among the 
best specimens of ancient compositions in the department of 
letter-writing. Pliny's letter is in the terms following. 

TO SAB1NIANUS. 

Your freedman, with whom you told me you were so much 
displeased, came to me, and throwing himself at my feet, as 
if it had been to yours, clung to me, wept much, entreated 
much, and then regarded me in silence. In fine he convinced 
me of his sincere repentance; I do believe in his amendment, 
as he has made the first step towards it, by being sensible of 
his error. I know you are greatly displeased with him, and 
1 know too not without reason ; but clemency is entitled to 
the greatest commendation, where there is most to justify re- 
sentment. You have had an affection for the man, and I hope 
you again have it. In the mean time, only suffer yourself to 
be entreated for him. You will have full right to be angry with 
him again, if he should again transgress; and your anger will 
be more excusable, after giving proof of your clemency. Allow 
something to his youth, something to his tears, and something 
to your own disposition to forgive. Do not any longer make 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 3] 3 

him uneasy ; and I will add, do not make yourself so, for you 
vex yourself when, with your mild disposition, you suffer 
yourself to be angry. I am afraid lest I should seem rather 
to compel than to supplicate, if I should join my entreaties 
to his. Yet still I mast do it, and that the more freely, as I 
have sharply and severely reproved him ; threatening him in 
plain terms that I will never entreat for him again. This I 
said to him, as it was necessary to alarm him, but I do not 
say the same to you ; for it is not impossible, that I may have 
occasion again to beg and obtain your forgiveness for him ; 
should his error be of such a nature, as that it may be becoming 
in me to beg for him, and you to pardon him. 

TO THE SAME. 

You have done what is very gratifying to me, in having again 
received into your favour your freedman, whom you once so 
kindly regarded, in compliance with my letter. I think this 
act will give you pleasure in the reflexion upon it. It cer- 
tainly gives me pleasure : first, because I see in it a proof, that 
in the midst of your anger you do not lose the government of 
yourself,- and in the next place, because it is a proof that my 
interest with you is such that you are pleased either to re- 
spect my authority, or to comply with my wishes. I there- 
fore both commend and thank you ; and at the same time 
I venture to advise you to be disposed in future to pardon 
the errors of your people, though there should be none to 
intercede for them. 



ST. PAUL S LETTER TO PHILEMON. 

Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, 
unto Philemon, our dearly beloved, and fellow-labourer ; and 
to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus, our fellow-soldier, and 
to the church in thy house : grace be to you, and peace from 
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

I thank my God, making mention of thee always in my 



314 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

prayers; hearing of thy love and faith, which thou hast to- 
ward the Lord Jesus, and toward all the saints; (I pray) that 
the communication of the faith may become effectual, by the 
acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ 
Jesus. For we have great joy and consolation in thy love, 
because the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother. 
Wherefore, though I might be much bold in Christ to enjoin 
thee that which is convenient, yet, for love's sake, I rather 
beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now 
also a prisoner of Jesus Christ, I beseech thee for my son 
Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds; which, in 
time past, was to thee unprofitable, but now (will be) profit- 
able to thee and to me ; whom I have sent again : thou, there- 
fore, receive him — that is, mine own bowels, whom I would 
have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have min- 
istered unto me in the bonds of the gospel. But without thy 
mind would I do nothing, that thy benefit should not be as it 
were of necessity, but willingly. For, perhaps, he therefore 
departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him for 
ever ; not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother be- 
loved, specially to me, but now much more unto thee, both in 
the flesh and in the Lord ! 

If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself. 
If he has wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine 
account ; I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will 
repay it : albeit, I do not say to thee how thou owest unto 
me even thine own self. Yea, brother, let me have joy of thee 
in the Lord ; refresh my bowels in the Lord. 

Having confidence in thy obedience I wrote unto thee, know- 
ing that thou wilt also do more than I say. But withal pre- 
pare me also a lodging ; for I trust that through your prayers 
I shall be given unto you. 

There salute thee Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in Christ 
Jesus ; Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellow la- 
bourers. 

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. 
Amen. 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 315 



FROM ISIDORE OF PELUSIUM TO 1RO ; THE RHETORICIAN, 
CONCERNING HIS DELINQUENT SLAVE, EN- 
TREATING PARDON FOR HIM. 

A young man came to me the other day, in my retreat, and 
having found the keeper of the door, requested to be admitted 
to have access to me. As it is my custom to receive all who 
come to me, and to suffer them to rest and converse with me, 
he was invited in. The moment he entered he threw himself 
on the ground, and spoke not a word, till after he had relieved 
himself by a flood of tears. When having taken him by the 
hand, and promised to succour him to the best of my ability, 
I asked who he was, and what he stood in need of? He said 
he was your servant, and that through ignorance he had com- 
mitted so grievous a fault, that, as he feared, it exceeded all 
hope of pardon. My first impression was that of wonder; for 
I can hardly believe that Iro, a lover of Christ, who has known, 
and experienced that grace, which claims liberty for all men, 
can allow himself to possess a slave. My next feeling was 
that of sadness ; for we are commanded by Christ to forgive 
one another every trespass, however often repeated. He taught 
this, and he practised it. In these words he taught it : " If 
ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father 
forgive your trespasses." And he practised it when he de- 
livered the Adulteress, the Publican, the Samaritan, the para- 
lytic, and Peter, the head of the company of Apostles, from 
their sins and infirmities of the body and the spirit. Where- 
fore, if you desire to imitate Christ, pardon those who offend 
thee, where their offences are great. Faults of small magni- 
tude most men will overlook, when their forgiveness is en- 
treated : but the greater offences those only remit, who have 
a conscientious fear of God, and expect from him to be greatly 
rewarded for their virtuous actions. 



Above is a letter of St. Paul contrasted with two others on 
the same subject, the one by a polished heathen, whose na- 



316 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

tural good disposition had, it may well be conceived, been in- 
sensibly improved by contact with the new dispensation which 
had made itself felt where it was not acknowledged ; and the 
other by a Christian Father, the disciple of Chrysostom, and 
an eminent preacher and expounder of evangelical doctrine. 
Of Pliny's letter, who can dispute the soundness, good sense, 
and humanity ? or deny that it makes an extraordinary ap- 
proach to the temper and tenderness of the blessed Apostle ? 
he adverts even to the possible repetition of his fault by the 
offender after experiencing the clemency of his master, and 
reserves the privilege of a fresh application in his behalf, 
making, however, the exercise of such privilege to depend 
upon the circumstances which might characterise the future 
offence ; and adding that he had thought it prudent to with- 
hold this intention from the culprit. The argument drawn 
from the pleasure attendant on the act of pardoning, is urged 
with much sensibility and address. 

In the letter of Isidore, the sentiments are more lax and 
diffuse ; less prudently enforced, and on the whole, perhaps, 
less calculated to obtain their object. The precept uttered by 
the sacred authority to which Isidore refers, must, it is true, 
be taken without restriction or curtailment ; but it is not to be 
understood as intending to forbid the necessary castigation for 
crime and transgression, administered in mercy ; while it in- 
culcates without limit the forgiveness of the heart, and the 
extinction of every motive of anger or revenge. 

There is in the letter of St. Paul, the perfect union of pru- 
dence, humanity, and delicacy. As a mere human composition, 
it is said by Dr. Doddridge, to be a master-piece of its kind, 
and if we duly regard the constituents of excellence in letter- 
writing, the commendation seems hardly to be carried too far. 

The parts of the epistle are remarkably well adapted to each 
other ; and are united in their tendency to promote the suit of 
the writer by conciliating the favour of the person written to. 
Even the egotism of the writer operates to strengthen his ap- 
peal, and to give a certain weight to his intercession. So 
much argument in so small a compass is not easy to be found ; 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 317 

and it is the distinguishing excellence of the epistle, that all 
the topics of reasoning are drawn from the private and per- 
sonal connexion subsisting between the parties. 

Written by one in bonds, on behalf of one of the lowest 
grade in life, but the child of his fostering care and spiritual 
adoption, the letter of St. Paul has a peculiar pathos, and 
an end and design as special as it was important. By address- 
ing the letter, not to Philemon singly, but to the various per- 
sons of his family, their aid in the promotion of his suit was 
very discreetly bespoken ; and the preface is truly conciliat- 
ing, by informing the person addressed of the share he has in 
the prayers of the writer, and of the opinion entertained of his 
increasing faith and love ; thus preparing and disposing him 
without artifice or pretence to listen with favour to the request 
of the letter. The commendatory terms made use of were 
such as could not fail to excite a favourable impression in the 
bosom of Philemon, especially as having reference to those 
qualities which it was the interest of the applicant to call 
into exercise on this occasion. The appellation of brother, 
and the cursory allusion to the age and apostleship of the 
writer, and the authority with which he was invested by 
the Church to which they both belonged, and to which 
Philemon owed a special obedience, besides the filial affection 
which Paul might claim for himself personally as his father 
in Christ, are means of which he makes a very affecting 
and judicious use. The language is that of supplication 
without servility. There occurs a repetition of some of the 
beseeching terms, which coming from so gifted a person, and 
so experienced a teacher, conduces greatly to the general 
effect ; to which effect much persuasive efficacy is added by 
the prospect opened of advantage of the most substantial 
kind to Philemon, from those new qualities in his servant, 
from which Paul had derived so much assistance and solace; 
and on whom he therefore thinks it not too much to bestow 
the title of son. 

The verse which is, perhaps, most to be admired for its 
beauty and pathos is the fifteenth, which has been observed 



318 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

to be not unlike the apology which Joseph makes for his 
brethren ; drawn from the merciful display of that Providence 
which so often educes good out of evil : " for perhaps he 
therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive 
him for ever." Tcr^a yap Sia tovto E^wpttrSr] 7rpoe waav, Iva 
aiwviov avrov air^x^Q. The terms used throughout the letter 
are very aptly chosen, but none with more delicacy and grace 
than the word g^wpta-S^, he was separated ; in which a shade 
is thrown upon the real act of running away. And though 
some consider the last words of the verse, Iva aiwviov avrov 
aTTExvc, as only implying the master's repossession of his slave 
for life, our translators appear to have taken the passage in 
a higher and holier sense, as intimating an ever-enduring bond 
of union and fellowship in Christ. 

What a man writes with his own hand, does seem to carry 
more the impress of his mind than what he writes by the 
hand of another ; and this sort of assurance of sincerity is 
not lost sight of by the apostle ; who thus attests his under- 
taking to make good what in a worldly view might be con- 
sidered as lost to the master by the truancy of his slave ; but 
the asseveration so confirmed has its chief value in the oppor- 
tunity it gives the writer of grounding his claim to a com- 
pliance with the request of the letter on a debt of everlasting 
obligation. " Albeit I do not say unto thee how thou owest 
unto me even thine own self besides." 

The twenty-first verse is expressed in terms extremely 
delicate and prudent. " Knowing that thou wilt also do 
more than I say," vTrsp 6 Xeyw ttomigeiq, by which nothing is 
asked, but everything is implied. 

That more was done for Onesimus than St. Paul distinctly 
and expressly asked for, there is good reason to think; and 
that Philemon did not only comply with the request of the 
apostle in pardoning his slave, but that Onesimus obtained at 
the hand of his Christian master his entire freedom. By the 
epistle to the Colossians, it appears that Onesimus was sent 
by St. Paul in company with Tychicus, both of whom are 
called his beloved brothers, to inform the people of Colosse, 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 319 

his countrymen, of all the things which were doing at Rome in 
the service of the gospel. 



Pliny's letters of compliment and kindness are among the 
most elegant of that description. The following is produced, 
because it testifies to the harmonious intercourse he maintained 
with his relatives and intimates. Fabatus was the grandfather 
of Calphurnia, Pliny's wife, and appears to have been a man 
of great wealth, distinguished by his taste, liberality, and vari- 
ous other excellent qualities. 

TO FABATUS. 

I have received your letters informing me of your erection of 
a noble portico to be a memorial of yourself and your son ; 
and that the next day you engaged to be at the expense of 
ornamenting the gates of the city, 22 so that the completion of 
one act of liberality is with you only the beginning of another. 
In the first place, I rejoice in everything that concerns your 
glory ; of which some part always reaches to myself, as having 
the honour of your alliance. In the next place, I am gratified 
by seeing the memory of my father-in-law thus secured from 
perishing by such beautiful structures ; and lastly, I rejoice 
to see such honour conferred on our native province. As 
everything that tends to its embellishment, by whomsoever 
done, is agreeable to me, so it is always most so to me when 
done by yourself. For the rest, my prayer to the gods is, 
that they would continue in you this generous disposition, and 
give you the longest term of existence to exercise it in. For 
I feel persuaded, that as soon as your next kind promise 
is performed, you will commence some other benefaction. 
Generosity when set in motion is not easily stopped, so does 
she lead us on and charm us by her beauty. 



2 Commn, or Novum Comum, a small town of the ancient Insubria, near 
the Lacus Larius, and within no great distance from the Padus, or Po, was 
the birth-place of the younger Pliny. The Insubres were the inhabitants of 



320 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

No entire consistency of sentiment or moral tact can be 
looked for under the discipline of heathen ethics; and we 
shall find Pliny not unfrequently maintaining propositions at 
variance with the general tenour of his maxims of life and 
conduct ; but on the whole the character of Pliny comes so 
near the gospel standard in kindness, gentleness, and brotherly 
love, that it is almost a subject of wonder that having had so 
close an observation of the Christian religion in his province 
of Bithynia, he should have yet remained untouched by the 
testimonies of its practical influence, and unawed by the 
marks of its celestial origin. But our wonder in the con- 
sideration of this subject is greatly increased when we see 
this proficient in the school of humanity, this writer of the 
letter to Caninius, wherein he laments with tears the violent 
death of a gentle dolphin, extorting what he calls the real 
truth by putting to the torture two female slaves, accused of 
having acted in the character of Christian functionaries, and 
in whom, he admits, he could discover nothing more than 
an absurd and excessive superstition. The story of the dolphin 
has in it a character of childish credulity, but it is mingled 
with so much good nature, and kind-heartedness, that in an 
age and a country in which (such is the expansion which since 
the slave emancipation, the feelings of humanity have received 
in breadth and compass) a league has been formed for the 
protection of the brute creation, it may be read with a kindly 
interest. 

TO CANINIUS. 

I have accidentally met with a story, which, though well ac- 
credited, has very much the air of fiction, and is worthy of 
your luxuriant, and truly sublime and poetical genius. It was 
told me at a table, where the conversation happened to turn 
upon various extraordinary occurrences. The relator was a 
man very worthy of credit ; but what has a poet to do with 
plain matters of fact. Still, however, it must be said that my 



that tract of country, bordering on the Po, now forming the district or region 
of which Milan is the capital city. 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 32 J 

author, in this case, was a person to whom you would have 
given full credit for any fact which, if you were about writing 
a history, you might wish to record. There is a colony in 
Africa called Hippo, on the sea coast ; and near it is a navi-r 
gable lake, communicating with the main ocean by an estuary, 
which ebbs and flows with the flux and reflux of the tide. The 
inhabitants of all ages divert themselves with fishing, sailing, 
or swimming in it ; especially boys, who are drawn thither by 
idleness or the love of play ; and whose pride and glory it is to 
swim as far as possible into the deep water. He who leaves 
the shore and his companions at the farthest distance is the 
conqueror. In this contention one of the boys, more bold 
than the others, ventured out towards the opposite shore. He 
was met by a dolphin, 19 which sometimes swam before him, 
sometimes behind him, then played round him, and at length 

19 It was a notion not uncommon among the ancients, that the brute creatures 
have laws and morals bearing some analogy to the human species. The his- 
tory of animals by iElian abounds with instances in support of this position. 
To de kcli toiq aXoyoig fisTUvai tlvoq aptrrjg Kara (pvaiv — Kai noWa twv 
avQpo)7nvu)v 7r\eoveKTt]fiaT(j)v Kai Savjia'za ex uv GvyKEK\r)p<ti[ievd, tovto r]Srj 
fieya. That dumb animals are partakers by their nature of a certain kind of 
virtue, and possess many and wonderful properties in common with mankind. 
The elephant was at least as much celebrated for his intellectual endowments 
by the ancients, as at this day by the people of India and Persia. See Plin. 
H. N. viii. Aristotle calls these supposed properties fiifxrjfiaTa njg avOpwrnvrig 
Kiorjg. H. A. ix, 7, and Cicero Simulachra virtutum. II De Fin. 33. 

The Pythagoric doctrine of the metempsycosis tended much to promote a 
compassionate feeling for the brute creation. Diog. Laert. viii. 77. Porphyr. 
de Abstin. ab Animal, 1. 3 and 4. And the Stoics by holding the doctrine of the 
Anima Mundi, of which the souls of all animals, brutes as well as men, were 
parts or emanations, of the same nature, as being all derived from the same 
fountain, and varying only in force and operation, fostered the same benevo- 
lent regard for the feelings and comforts of the inferior creatures endowed with 
life. To the same doctrine Virgil alludes in those beautiful lines of the fourth 
Georgic 219: 

His quidem signis, atque haec exempla secuti, 
Esse apibus partem divinse mentis, et haustus 
iEtherios dixere : Deum namque ire per omnes 
Terrasque, tractusque maris, ccelumque profundum. 
The Stoics attributed to brutes, not our passions and affections in strict iden- 
tity of kind, but the shadows and resemblances of them. Thus Seneca, in the 

Y 



322 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

took him upon his back, then let him down ; and again took 
him up, carrying him at first quite out into the deep parts, till 
after a little time he turned back with him to the shore, and 
landed him safe among his companions. The fame of this 
strange affair spread through the colony. All gathered about 
the boy as a sort of prodigy, to ask him questions, and hear 
his account of the miracle. The next day the shore was be- 
sieged with spectators, all looking eagerly towards the sea ; 
and the lake which is almost like the sea. The boys com- 
menced swimming ; and among others the boy above-men- 
tioned, but with more caution than on the former occasion. 
The dolphin again appeared, and came to the same boy, who 
swam away with the others. The fish, as if inviting and re- 
calling them, leaps on the water and dives under it, turning 
about and about in various circles. This was repeated on the 
next day, and on many days successively, until the inhabitants, 
inured to the sea from their childhood, began to be ashamed 
of their fears. They approach him, play with him, and call him 
to them. They next begin to touch him, and he in return 
offers himself to be stroked by them. And especially the boy, 
who was his first acquaintance, swam to him, leaped upon his 
back, and was carried about by him. Their affection became 

third chapter of his first book De Ira, — Muta animalia humanis affectibus 
carent : habent autem similes illis quosdam im pulsus. — Metus autem, solli- 
citudinesque, et tristitia, et ira non sunt, sed his quaedam similia id. ibid. 
These shadows and resemblances of human appetites, affections, and qualities,, 
seemed to entitle the mute animals to the consideration and regard of human 
beings, as having, in some respects, a fellowship of condition with them ; and 
so becoming and graceful in the character of our own species is this sympathy 
with these poor dependents on our will, and ministers of our pleasure, that one 
cannot but regard with a sort of complacency even some prejudices and erring 
opinions which favour its influence. Ulysses was not less a hero, because 
Homer has made him weep over his faithful dog when he expired at his feet. 
• avrap b vo<j<piv idwv a.7roixop£,aro daicpv, 



'Peia Xa6d)v Evfiaiov. 



Adown his cheek the tear unbidden stole, 

Stole unperceived ; he turn'd his head, and dried 

The drop humane.- 

Odyss. xvii. 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 323 

mutual, and all fear was dismissed on either side. The confi- 
dence of the one, and the courtship of the other went on 
increasing ; while the rest of the boys on the right and left 
were surrounding and encouraging their companion. What 
was very wonderful, this dolphin was accompanied by another, 
which seemed to follow only as a spectator and attendant, for 
he did not do, or submit to, the same things as the other, but 
only conducted him backwards and forwards, as the other boys 
did their comrade. It is really hardly credible, but yet it is as 
well vouched for as what has been already related, that this 
dolphin who thus played with the boys and carried him on his 
back, would come upon the shore, and when inconvenienced by 
the heat, would roll himself back into the sea. It is reported 
that Octavius Avitus, the deputy of the proconsul, from a 
false notion of religion, poured some ointment upon him as he 
lay on the shore ; the novelty and smell of which made him 
retreat hastily into the sea. And when he appeared again, 
which was not till after some days, he seemed dull and sorrow- 
ful. He soon however recovered his strength, and repeated his 
gambols and accustomed services. The magistrates all came 
to the spectacle, by whose arrival, and stay for a while among 
them, the little community was put to an inconvenient ex- 
pence. At length the place itself lost its quiet and retire- 
ment. It was thought proper, therefore, to prevent this resort 
to the place, by privately killing the cause of it. And now 
in what tender strains of compassion, and with what compass 
and energy of language, you will lament, adorn, and elevate 
this event. Though, indeed, the fact is so interesting, that it 
stands in need of neither embellishment nor addition. It will 
be quite enough to set forth the facts, as they really happened, 
in their full extent. 



Now and then we meet with a letter of this polished heathen 
in which a little too much levity is mixed with his morality ; 
yet, in general, it must be admitted that the structure of his 
mind seems to have been singularly correct, and his senti- 



324 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

ments to have been governed by a sort of complexional con- 
formity to whatever is most becoming and appropriate in 
the different relations and allotments of life. He was naturally 
of a gentle and domestic cast of character, and possessed of a 
correct sense of what was necessary to social happiness. 
Virtue had its value with him chiefly in reference to its 
practical expediency, and as furnishing technical rules for 
regulating the interchanges of good manners, and good offices; 
and, if he was inferior to the great moralists of Greece and 
Rome in the dignity of the foundation on which virtue was 
established, and the sacred springs from which philosophy 
deduced its obligations; yet none of the ancients exceeded, 
or, perhaps, equalled him in his perception of the verum 
atque decens, the to irovirov in the common intercourse of 
life. The following epistle will in some degree illustrate these 
remarks. 

TO GEMINIUS. 

Numidia Quadratilla has just departed this life, having 
nearly attained her eightieth year. Down to the period of 
her last sickness she was green and flourishing, with a body 
firm and robust beyond what is usual with her sex. She left 
behind her a very just and proper will : having disposed of 
two thirds of her estate to her grandson, and the remainder to 
her granddaughter. With the granddaughter I am but little 
acquainted; the grandson, I both well know, and much love; 
— a youth of rare virtue, and to be loved not only by his 
relations in blood, but by all in any way connected with him. 
Though remarkably well favoured, yet living without scandal. 
A husband under four and twenty years old, and who would 
have been a father if Providence had permitted. He lived in 
the house of his grandmother, a gay person, with great strict- 
ness of behaviour, and yet with the most dutiful respect. She 
kept a set of pantomimes, and expended more upon these 
people than was consistent with her sex and rank. Quadratus 
was a spectator of these persons neither at the theatre nor 
at home; nor indeed, was expected so to be. I heard her 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINT. 325 

say, when she was commending to me the studies pursued by 
her grandson, that she was accustomed to pass some of that 
time which ladies have upon their hands in playing at chess, or 
in looking at the performances of her pantomimes; but that 
whenever she was amusing herself in either of these ways, she 
desired her grandson to leave her, and go to his studies ; 
which it seemed to me was done by her not more out of love, 
than a certain reverence for his character. You will be sur- 
prised, as indeed I was, at what I am going to tell you. At 
the last pontifical games, as we were leaving the theatre 
together, where we had been entertained with the exhibition 
of the pantomimes, do you know, said he, this is the first 
time I ever saw Quadratilla's freed man dance. Such is the 
grandson. A very different sort of men to do her honour (I 
am ashamed to call it honour) were in an adulatory manner 
running about the stage, exulting, applauding, and shouting 
their applause ; and then mimicking the gestures of the per- 
formers, and repeating their songs to pay their court to the 
mistress of the revels. But all they have gained by these arts 
is a few trifling legacies, which they receive from the heir, 
who never attended these spectacles. I have written to you 
this account, because I know you like to hear the news, and 
because when anything has given me pleasure, I love to renew 
it by relating it. The affection of the defunct, and the honour 
done to this excellent young man are circumstances which 
give me great pleasure. I am glad, also, that the mansion 
which once belonged to Cassius, who was the founder and 
chief of the Cassian school, has fallen into the hands of 
a person no less distinguished than its former possessor. 
My friend Quadratus will fill it as it ought to be filled; and 
will bring to it again its pristine dignity and celebrity, by 
becoming as great an orator as the other was a lawyer. 



Whatever virtuous habits, dispositions, and sentiments^ 
could grow and expand under the shade of heathen supersti- 
tion, disclosed themselves in the writings and intercourse of 



326 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

the younger Pliny. Even the moral benefits of sickness were 
understood and felt by his rightly constituted mind. His 
letter on this subject is very deserving of insertion, as bearing 
a most creditable testimony to those elements of truth and 
goodness which distinguished his character ; but chiefly as 
bringing the religion of Pliny into contrast with the Christian 
religion, where it comes forth in the panoply of its graces and 
privileges. The refined and contemplative pagan could per- 
ceive and understand how the sharp corrective of sickness 
loosens the hold of this world, and breaks the spell of its en- 
chantments; but where to fix the thoughts thus disengaged ; 
where to lay the burthen down and find rest and refreshment, 
was intelligence to be drawn from a source not within the 
reach of Pliny or his imperial patron. 

to maxim us. 

The illness of a friend has lately taught me to think that 
we are most virtuously disposed in the hour of sickness. Who 
when in that state is under the influence of avarice or lust ? 
Then neither his appetites nor his ambition enslaves him. He 
is careless about riches, and however small his possessions, 
being sensible how soon he must part with them, he feels he 
has enough. He is then reminded there are Gods, and that 
he is but a man. He enries no one, he admires no one, he 
despises no one. He has no interest in or appetite for slan- 
derous reports. He thinks only of baths and fountains. These 
are the chief objects of his cares and vows. His resolution is, 
should he recover, to live in ease and quiet, that is, to live 
harmless and happy. I can lay down both for yourself and 
myself in a little compass, a rule, which the philosophers 
make the subject of many words, I may say volumes, — that 
such as we profess ourselves to be when in sickness, we should 
endeavour perseveringly to be when in health. 20 



20 The mind which in sickness is engrossed with thoughts of baths and 
fountains, and resolves to signalize the restoration to health by a life of ease, 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLIXY. 327 

The sorrow of Pliny for the death of Junius Avitus, and the 
various admirable qualities of the departed youth, form the 
subject of a truly elegant and affecting letter, well entitled 
to particular attention for the proof it exhibits of the writer's 
benevolence, and the homage it pays to extraordinary merit. 
I would venture to recommend it to the careful perusal of the 
young especially, as one of the most natural and touching of 
Pliny's epistles, and inferior to none by the same hand in 
vivacity and delicacy of expression. 

TO MARCELLINUS. 

The heavy affliction with which the death of Junius Avitus 
has overwhelmed me has dispersed and broken up all my 
studies, pursuits, and avocations. It was in my house that 
he first put on the laticlave, as in all the honours for which 
he was a candidate he was assisted by my interest. On this 
account he entertained such an affectionate respect for me, 
that he adopted me as the guide and regulator of his conduct; 
— a disposition rarely found in the young men of this day : 
for where is now the youth to be found who pays the due 
deference to the age or authority of another ? without inter- 
mediate steps they are at once wise, at once acquainted with 
all things ; they reverence none, they copy no models ; they 
are their own patterns. Not so Avitus : whose wisdom was 
principally this, that he thought others wiser than himself,- — 
his principal learning, that he was willing to be taught. He 
was always consulting his friends concerning his studies or 
his duties ; and came from consulting them a gainer, either 
by what he learned from them, or by the questions he had 
the opportunity of submitting to them. What homage he 
paid to that most correct of men, Servianus ! whom, when he 

(mollis et pinguis,) will profit little by the discipline it has undergone. What 
a cheerless aspect does this present of the pagan on the bed of sickness. With 
these narrow conceptions of the destiny of man, and the ends of his creation, 
Pliny was consistent enough in the representations and reasonings of his letter 
to Trajan on the subject of the Christian converts, in his province of Bithynia. 



328 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

went as lieutenant from Germany into Pannonia, he attended 
as tribune, and followed not so much as a brother officer, 
as a companion, and attendant upon his instructions. With 
what assiduity and modesty did he discharge the duties of 
quaestor to the several Consuls under whom he served that 
office, making himself not more pleasant and agreeable to 
them than valuable ? With what earnestness of application 
did he solicit this very sedileship, from the possession of which 
he has been so suddenly snatched away ? Which reflexion 
greatly embitters my sorrow. His unavailing labours, his 
fruitless solicitations, and the honour which he was permitted 
only to deserve, are always in my thoughts. That laticlave 
first put on under my roof; the first and last suffrage I ever 
gave him ; those conversations, those consultations, are again 
and again occurring to my mind. I am deeply affected by 
the consideration of his youth, and not less so by reflecting on 
the loss his family and connexions have sustained. He had 
an aged parent, a young wife to whom he had been married 
but a year; a daughter just brought into the world ; so many 
hopes, so many delights, reversed and scattered in a single 
day ! Just appointed aedile, j ust become a husband, just made 
a father, he left his promotion untouched, a mother desolate, 
his wife a widow, an orphan infant, who will never know her 
grandfather or father. It is an aggravation of my sorrow 
that being wholly ignorant of the impending calamity, the 
sickness and decease of my friend came upon me at the same 
moment, giving me no time for anticipating and preparing for 
the event. The anguish of my mind would not suffer me to 
write on any other subject, nor can I at the present moment 
either think or speak of anything else. 



The instructions given to his friend about to set out to the 
Roman province of Achaia, of which he had recently been 
appointed to the government, as proconsul, does great honour 
to the discernment and feelings of Pliny. The Conquest of 
Greece was among the last triumphs of the genius of republican 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 329 

Rome ; and some reverence was yet due to the manes of de- 
parted greatness lying buried under a surface on which so 
many heroes had almost left the print of their footsteps, 
and which the struggles of rivalry and ambition had covered 
with the monuments of great achievements in arts and arms, 
and whatever else belongs to the stimulated growth of irre- 
gular greatness. Pliny's respect for a country so renowned in 
poetry, history, and fable, was natural and becoming in a 
scholar, who was conscious of the obligations he lay under, as 
a lover of letters and philosophy, to the models and examples 
of Greece. 

TO MAXIMUS. 

The love I bear you compels me, not indeed to direct you, for 
you have no need of a director, but to remind and admonish 
you to practise carefully what you already know. Reflect 
that you are sent into the province of Achaia, the true and 
genuine Greece, where polite learning, and even agriculture 
itself, are believed to have been first invented ; that you are 
sent to govern a state consisting of free cities ; to men espe- 
cially free, who held fast the privilege they received from 
nature, by their courage, by their superior qualities, by their 
alliances, and by their fidelity to their engagements. You 
will revere the Gods, their founders. You will revere their 
ancient glory, and even their age, which in men is venerable, 
■in cities sacred. Their antiquity, their illustrious achieve- 
ments, their very fabulous legends, you will hold in honour. 
You will abridge nothing of their dignity, nothing of their 
freedom, nothing even of what flatters their vanity. Keep in 
your mind the remembrance that this is that country which 
sent us laws : and that she did not receive them from us as 
a conquered nation, but furnished them to us in compliance 
with our request. Remember it is Athens you are approach- 
ing ; it is Laced emon you are about to govern : from whom 
to take away this last shadow, this last trace and name of 
liberty, would, indeed, be hard, ferocious, barbarous. You see 
that physicians, though in their actual treatment of maladies 



330 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

they make no difference between the servile and the free, yet 
comport themselves with more courtesy and gentleness of 
manner towards those of the higher class. Bear in mind 
what each of these states were in former days ; but let not 
this consideration induce you to despise them for ceasing to 
be what once they were. Let all pride and asperity of manner 
be far removed from you, nor be apprehensive of incurring 
contempt by kindness. Can he who is invested with the 
authority of a ruler, and holds the fasces, be an object of con- 
tempt, unless he first contemns himself, and by mean and 
sordid behaviour is the author of his own degradation. It is 
not by the contumelious treatment of others that power is es- 
tablished. Veneration is not the offspring of terror. Far better 
will you bring about your objects by love than by fear. Fear 
retires when you retire, but love remains when your presence 
is withdrawn. As the one is changed into hatred, so the 
other is succeeded by veneration. It becomes you, therefore, 
again and again I repeat it, to consider well the purpose of 
your appointment, and to revolve with yourself, the nature and 
magnitude of the task of governing a free state. For what 
higher political duty can man undertake than that of govern- 
ment, or what is more precious to man than liberty ? What 
can be more disgraceful than to make government the means 
of subverting a state, and to substitute slavery in the place 
of freedom. To these considerations I would add that you 
have a contest to maintain with yourself. The fame you 
brought with you from your quaastorship in Bithynia ; the 
good opinion of your sovereign ; the reputation you acquired 
as tribune and prsetor, and this very government with which 
you are now invested, and which was bestowed upon you as a 
reward, all concur to impose upon you a weight of responsi- 
bility : the more incumbent it is upon you to prevent its 
appearing that you exercise in a distant province more 
humanity, ability, and prudence, than in one nearer to Rome ; 
in a country of slaves than among a free people. Let it not 
be said that it was chance, not judgment that sent you to this 
province; and that you were a raw and untried man, instead 
of a person tried and approved. And besides all this, your 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 331 

acquaintance with men and books must have suggested to you 
that it is more disgraceful to lose one's reputation, than not 
to have acquired any. Again I beg to assure you, as I told 
you at the beginning of this letter, that I have written this 
to remind and not to direct you. Although I am not afraid 
of exceeding the due bounds, if I yield to the dictates of 
affection. For we are in no danger of excess when the feeling 
can be justified in its fullest extent. 



In the month of September, in the sixth year of the reign of 
the Emperor Trajan, a.d. 103, between the first and second 
Dacian war, the younger Pliny, having pronounced in the 
senate house his celebrated panegyric on the virtues and ex- 
cellencies of the Emperor, was appointed, as the reward of his 
loyalty and services, Governor of Pontus and Bithynia, in 
Asia minor, not merely as a proconsul, but as the lieutenant of 
his Prince, with special powers ; being required not only to ex- 
amine the public revenues, but to transmit full reports of all 
particulars within his province, whether relating to civil or 
religious matters. It was in the discharge of this important 
office that Pliny forwarded his dispatches relating to the reli- 
gious novelties introduced by the Christians, who now began 
to spread their opinions through the greatest part of the Roman 
world. In the third year of this potent Prince, distinguished 
by his zeal in the cause of superstition and paganism, we date 
the third general persecution of the church ; and it is remark- 
able that while Trajan, Pliny, and Tacitus, were looking with 
disdain and contempt upon the religion of Jesus, the prayers 
of faith throughout the empire were ascending from the sanc- 
tuary to the throne above, and undaunted believers were at- 
testing and sealing with their deaths their participation in that 
new covenant, whereby all the promises were receiving their 
completion in the mighty dispensation of grace, which was to 
take the redeemed of the Lord out of the hands of their enemies. 

The aversion with which Christianity was regarded by an 
Emperor, so renowned for his humanity and wisdom, and the 
prejudices and alarms which it was beginning to excite, by 



332 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

threatening the stability of a system so fixed and grounded 
in the habits of men, so interwoven with their histories, anti- 
quities, and legends, so blended with their highest boasts in 
arms and arts, and on which the maintenance, the gain, and 
aggrandisement of such multitudes depended, sufficiently ex- 
plain the falsities and calumnies with which it was assailed, 
and the little toleration it found in comparison with other in- 
novations and reforms. It was, however, an aera teeming 
with the brightest testimonies to the truth. The Apostle 
John was breathing his expiring exhortations to love and 
charity. Clement was taking up the mantle of Paul, and 
Ignatius and Polycarp were supplying the first links of that 
chain of evidence which has established the identity of the 
sacred record by an unbroken series of witnesses from its first 
promulgation to the present hour. Contrary to all human 
policy and human calculation, the work of twelve poor men 
of a despised nation was travelling in the greatness of His 
strength, who can bring might out of weakness, and make all 
things, whether little or great, proceed according to his own 
purpose and grace. The gospel of Jesus, within seventy years 
from his leaving the world, had carried its peaceful victories 
to the utmost verge of the Roman triumphs. 

While Pliny was exercising his government in Bithynia, 
and Trajan was prosecuting his splendid successes in Dacia, 
Christianity was establishing itself in its apostolical churches 
of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and was 
mightily working its way through blood and persecution to 
the fulfilment of its wonderful destiny. In the provinces of 
Pontus and Bithynia it was making extraordinary progress ; 
and so vast and rapid was the increase, that it became evident 
that to extirpate it by putting in force for that purpose, the 
laws of the empire against it, would have been to deluge those 
provinces in blood, and reduce them almost to a desert. In 
this extremity it was that the celebrated epistle on the sub- 
ject, with which we shall close the letters of Pliny, was written 
by that amiable but erring man to his equally virtuous but 
mistaking master. 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 333 



TO THE EMPEROR TRAJAN. 

It is my custom, and one which I consider of solemn obliga- 
tion, to refer all my doubts to you : for who is better able to 
decide me when in perplexity, or to instruct me when igno- 
rant. I have never been present at the trials of Christians, 
and, therefore, am unacquainted with the nature of the crime, 
how 7 far it is punishable, or how to proceed in the enquiries 
concerning it. Nor have I been unperplexed with doubts, 
whether respect should be had to difference of age; or whe- 
ther any distinction should be made between those of deli- 
cate and those of robust frames ; whether repentance should 
entitle to pardon ; or whether it should avail anything to him 
who had once been a thorough Christian, to desist from his 
error : whether the name only without any criminal acts, or only 
the crimes which accompany the profession are to be punished. 
In the meantime, with respect to those who have been brought 
before me as Christians, I have observed this course. I first 
demanded of them whether they were Christians ? Upon their 
confessing themselves to be so, I have put the same question 
to them a second and a third time, adding threats of punish- 
ment. If they have persisted in the same answer, I have 
ordered them to be led to execution : for I did not doubt 
that whatever might be the opinions professed by them, a con- 
tumacious and inflexible obstinacy was deserving of punish- 
ment. Others who were chargeable with the same infatuation, 
being citizens of Rome, I ordered to be carried thither. 
While things were in this train, the error, as is usual, spread- 
ing further, more descriptions of the same offence occurred. 
An information was presented to me containing numerous 
names of accused persons, who, when they came before me, 
denied that they were, or ever had been Christians, so that 
when they had repeated after me an invocation to the gods, 
and offered wine and incense to your statue, which, for that 
purpose I had ordered to be brought with the images of the 
gods; and furthermore, had blasphemed the name of Christ; 



334 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

none of which things, they say, any sincere Christians can be 
forced to do : I thought it right to discharge them. Others 
mentioned in the libel, confessed that they were Christians, 
but presently afterwards denied it ; admitting, indeed, that 
such they had been, but that they had ceased to be so for 
three years past, others for many years, and some few for so 
long a period as twenty years. These all worshipped your 
statue, and the images of the gods, and blasphemed Christ. 
They affirmed that the whole sum of their guilt, or error, was 
this — that they were wont upon a set solemn day, to meet to- 
gether before sun rise, and to sing among themselves alter- 
nately a hymn to Christ, as a God, and to oblige themselves 
by a solemn oath not to commit any wickedness ; but to ab- 
stain from theft, robbery, and adultery ; to keep faith, and 
not to deny a deposit when called upon to deliver it up. 
After which it was their custom to separate, and meet again 
at a common and harmless meal. Which practice they have 
laid aside after the publication of my edict forbidding, accord- 
ing to your order, the meeting of any such assemblies. To 
satisfy myself of the truth of all this, I commanded two 
maidens, who were said to exercise some ministration or office 
among them, to be examined by torture. But I discovered 
nothing but the existence of an absurd and extravagant super- 
stition. And, therefore, desisting from any further process, I 
have betaken myself to you for advice ; as the case seemed 
to be worthy of consultation, considering the great numbers 
involved in the peril ; for many of every rank and either sex 
are and w r ill be called in question on this account. The con- 
tagion of this superstition which has overspread, not only 
cities, but towns and country villages, still seems possible to 
be stopped and corrected. It certainly does now appear that 
the temples which were nearly deserted, have begun to be fre- 
quented ; that the holy solemnities, long neglected, are now 
revived ; and that the victims for sacrifice begin to be sold ; 
which could till now rarely find a purchaser. So that it is 
easy to imagine what multitudes might be reclaimed, if place 
be allowed for repentance. 



LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 335 



TRAJAN TO PLINY. 

You have proceeded in a proper manner, my Secundus, in ex- 
amining the cases of those who have been brought before you 
for being Christians : for it is impossible to lay down any cer- 
tain and general rule for acting in all causes of this nature. 
Let them not be sought for, but if they be accused and con- 
victed, let them be punished, with this qualification, however, 
that if any one denies himself to be a Christian, and shall 
make it clearly appear that he is not by invoking our gods, 
although he may have heretofore been suspected, let him be 
pardoned upon his repentance. As for libels published, with- 
out the accuser's name, they ought not to be received in pro- 
secutions of any sort. For that would be an ill precedent, 
and not agreeable to the practice of our reign. 



The Emperor's answer to Pliny's letter on the subject of 
the prosecutions of the Christians, though vehemently cen- 
sured by Tertullian, as inconsistent and absurd, did very much 
tend to save them from the fury of their enemies, and to abate 
the rigour of the persecution. It discouraged the detestable 
infliction of torture, to extort confession and discovery, and 
put a stop to the iniquity of anonymous and secret accusa- 
tions. The religious prejudices and ignorance of Trajan 
were to be lamented and despised ; but when these unhappy 
consequences of the false views and notions in which he had 
been trained and confirmed are admitted and commiserated, 
it can not be denied, that considering the intimate connexion 
between the polity and religion of Rome, and the maxim of 
the government that no unlicenced assemblies of the people 
were to be allowed, the Emperor had certainly a warrant in 
the laws and usuages of the empire, and the necessities of the 
state, as it was constituted and upheld on its existing basis, for 
opposing the introduction of a foreign worship, and the doc- 
trines and ceremonies of a new relioion, The Christian reli- 



336 LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. 

gion was destined to be tried as silver is tried, and to pass 
through the furnace of affliction to that bright ascendancy in 
which it was finally to come forth ; to owe its prevalence to 
its discomfitures ; and to mount upwards in contradiction to 
the mass and momentum of the passions, prejudices, and de- 
pravity of the world. The opposition of Trajan was of no 
detriment to the progress of the great cause ; but his con- 
demnation of its primitive professors, and the cruel martyr- 
doms to which he gave the imperial sanction, have left a stain 
upon his memory not to be effaced by the splendour of his 
Dacian victories, or saved from execration by any political 
necessities, or any plausible precedents of government. 

With these specimens the English reader will, perhaps, be 
able to form an estimate of the merit of Pliny's letters. Cicero's 
appear to have been Pliny's model. Thus he writes to Regu- 
lus, — Est mihi cum cicerone semulatio ; nee sum contentus 
eloquentia sseculi nostri. Cicero had an advantage in the 
weight of his matter, as well as in the vigour and compass of 
his diction ; and in his day the latin language was at its highest 
point of perfection. Pliny, however, can hardly be said to 
have been excelled by Cicero in the light and playful properties 
of the familiar epistle, in the sprightly commerce of scholar- 
ship, or in those epistolae umbraticse which are the substitute 
for easy and friendly conversation. His letter-writing is re- 
ferred to by Erasmus as a good example of the stylus negli- 
gentiunculus, or what he afterwards better expresses by 
negligentiadeligens, since he allows the style of Pliny's letters 
to be acute, elegant, and, though in a domestic idiom, yet suffi- 
ciently chaste and polished. 

In his first letter, which seems to be meant as a sort of 
preface, he enters into the wish expressed by his friend, that 
his letters should be collected for publication. 



337 



CHAPTER XVI. 

LETTER WRITING FROM THE TIME OF PLINY TO THE 
TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 

There are many proofs of a prevailing relish among the latter 
Romans, for the graces of epistolary writing. It continued 
to be generally regarded as a convenient channel for the inter- 
course of taste, wit, and learning, as well as for the commerce 
of friendship, business, and domestic intercourse. Not many 
specimens, however, from the time of Pliny to the reign of 
Septimius Severus have come down to us to attest the suc- 
cess with which the practice was cultivated during that inter- 
val, about a century in duration. 

Philostratus, who assumed so much credit as a judge in 
this matter, and who wrote the life of Apollonius Tyaneus, 
has mentioned him as one of the best composers of epistles. 
We have a few of the letters ascribed to him transmitted to 
us. He was by profession a Pythagorean philosopher, born 
at Tyana, a city in Cappadocia, about the beginning of the 
Christian sera. There is much to convict him of being a gross 
impostor. The task of transcribing and adorning the narra- 
tive was assigned by the Empress Julia, the wife of Septimius 
Severus, to the Sophist Philostratus, and the office of impart- 
ing embellishment to the story was so liberally understood by 
Philostratus, that he appears to have given the utmost free- 
dom to his pen in the execution of it. There is, indeed, so 
much of the extravagance of invention and fiction in all that 
regards this character, that some have even doubted whether 
there ever was such a person : but the collateral evidence 
concerning him, coupled with the narrative of Philostratus, so 
substantiates this fact, that we cannot reasonably dispute that 
the subject of the inflated account of Philostratus did exist, 



338 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

and that he was a philosopher of the Pythagorean sect, who 
visited most parts of the civilized world, as a teacher and 
lecturer in the most abstruse sciences, and a very successful 
pretender to superratural powers. Such, indeed, was the 
homage he attracted, and the success with which he practised 
his arts of imposition, that he was not only regarded, in his 
life-time, as an extraordinary being, but long after his death 
he continued to be worshipped as a god. Some epistles, and 
his " Apology to Domitian/' are all that remain of his writ- 
ings. The epistles have, in general, a brevity and freshness 
in their style and sentiments, which give them at least the air 
of being genuine. A few shall be produced as specimens. 

APOLLON1US TO HISTI.EUS HIS BROTHER. 

How surprising it is, that when other mortals think me to be 
equal to a God, and some to be really a God, my own country, 
for whose sake I first sought celebrity, should be to this hour 
ignorant of what my claims really are. It is not, as I per- 
ceive, fully known and admitted, even by my own brothers, 
that I am superior to men in general, in my life and my dis- 
courses. Could you think so meanly of my understanding 
as to suppose me not to have known from the first, those 
things respecting my country and kinsmen, which are so 
plain that not even the most ignorant require to be taught 
them. Nor need I be told how correct and noble it is, to look 
upon the whole world as one's country, and all men as brothers 
and friends, since all derive their existence from God, are of 
one and the same nature, and possess in common the same 
speech and affections. Whencesoever any one may come, or 
wheresoever he may be born, whether barbarian or Greek, 
still he is man. But yet there are certain affinities of a special 
and appropriate kind which attract men to their several homes 
and kindred ; feelings that will have their influence, however 
we may reason on the subject. Thus the Ulysses of Homer 
preferred Ithaca to the immortality proffered him by the 
goddess. And I see the same law prevailing among the brute 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 339 

creation. For a bird does not find repose out of its own 
proper nest. And a fish, if forcibly turned in a contrary 
direction to its destined course, will not yield the point, but 
will return to it. The wild beast will not, though satiated 
with food, consent to lodge out of its proper resting place. 
Man has been, indeed, so constituted by nature, as to aspire 
to the appellation of wise ; and although all the rest of the 
earth were to supply him with whatever else he wanted, yet 
no other but his own land could shew him the monuments of 
his ancestors. 

THE SAME TO HIS BROTHER. 

If philosophy be, in truth, the most excellent and precious of 
all things, and we have in good faith and sincerity become 
philosophers, no one can justly suspect me of having sacrificed 
my affection for my brothers to a base and ungenerous mo- 
tive. I say this, because it appears that this suspicion sup- 
poses me to be influenced by a regard to money, when even 
before I took upon me to sustain the character of a philoso- 
pher, I had begun to look upon riches with contempt. So 
that it would have been more just and reasonable to im- 
pute my silence to some other cause. I am anxious to avoid 
two consequences, either to seem to be too self-important by 
writing the truth, or meanly to flatter by disguising it. To 
appear in either of these lights to one's brothers and friends, 
is equally to be deprecated. Perhaps fortune may permit 
me, when I shall have visited my friends at Rhodes, to come 
from thence to you at the end of the spring. 

TO EUPHRATES. 

I dec la he myself a friend to the philosophers, whereas for 
the sophists and grammarians, and whatever miserable kinds 
of persons like these there may be, I have no regard, nor ever 
shall have. With the sophists and grammarians you have no 
concern yourself unless you are one of them ; with the other 
you have a great concern, for their precepts are everything to 



340 FROM THE TIME OF PLTNY 

you. Control, therefore, your affections, and labour to acquire 
wisdom, nor allow yourself to regard the wise and philosophi- 
cal with invidious sentiments ; for remember, that old age and 
death are at hand. 

TO THE SAME. 

Your children will want but little if they are the true children 
of a philosopher. It is not, therefore, a worthy object of so- 
licitude to acquire for them more than what is sufficient, 
especially if there is any sacrifice of honour accompanying 
the acquisition. But if the thing is done, and wealth has 
been acquired, then the next thing to be thought of is to be 
careful to distribute a portion of this accumulation to others. 
And to remember that you have a country and friends. 

TO THE SAME. 

Of the discourses of Epicurus, that which he has written 
concerning pleasure stands in no need of any defender either 
from the garden or the school, for what he says on that sub- 
ject is admitted to be most true in the stoa ; but if you wish 
for a contradiction of the dogmas and discipline of the school 
of Chysippus, it is written for you in royal characters. 
Euphrates has again and again accepted what Epicurus would 
never accept. 

TO THE SAME. 

I enquired of some rich men whether there was any limit 
to their thirst of accumulation, and the answer was, there was 
none. I further asked what was the cause of this craving. 
They laid the blame on the unsatisfactoriness of riches. I said 
to them, Blame not riches, but yourselves, O miserable men, 
who have become wealthy without experience. 

TO THE NOBLES OF THE CITY OF CESAREA. 

In the first place is to be considered, the need which all mor- 
tals have of the assistance of the gods in all their undertak- 



TO THE TIME OF PH1LOSTRATUS. 341 

ings and concerns ; and therefore their first obligation is to 
them. Cities are entitled to their next consideration and 
regard, and every man of good understanding and virtue will 
make the happiness of states the principal object of his care. 
But where it is not only the case of a city, but of the greatest 
city in Palestine, and the most distinguished by its magni- 
tude, laws, and pursuits, its bravery in the field, its social 
and peaceful virtues, all which may be said of your city, be- 
yond all others admired and respected by me, and I think 
deserving to be so, not only by every man of an upright and 
sound mind, but by every man of common sense, and capable 
of comparing it with others, — if such a state condescends to 
bestow honours upon an individual man, and him a foreigner, 
separated at such a distance from it, what adequate compen- 
sation can the man so honoured make in return ? he can only, 
perhaps, if he is a pious person, pray to the gods for blessings 
upon that city ; and he may hope his prayers may be success- 
ful. This I purpose doing for you. It is a pleasure to con- 
template the refined humanity of the Greeks, who proclaim 
to the world, in their public documents, the virtues of indi- 
viduals. As the most suitable return for the special honour 
you have conferred upon me, I will endeavour to render Apol- 
lonius, the son of Aphorisius, a youth of the most powerful 
genius, and worthy of his name as a citizen of Csesarea, of 
real value and utility to his country, if fortune favours my 
design. 

TO SCOPELIANUS THE SOPHIST. 

There are, in all, five kinds or characters of style in composi- 
tion — the philosophic, the historic, the forensic, the epistolary, 
and that which is adapted to commentaries. If we distinguish 
these separate departments, and arrange them under their 
different heads, with a view to determine which is the proper- 
est style to be used in each, we shall see that the best is that 
which is most the writer's own, being the genuine product and 
suggestion of his own genius and talent. The next best is 
that which consists in imitating the best, where the writer is 



342 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

defective in original powers. What is really the best style 
absolutely considered, is the result of much mental effort. 
Therefore, where that cannot be attained to, the style natural 
to the writer, and properly his own, is generally the most 
vigorous and powerful. 

TO LESBONACTUS. 

Manliness best becomes us in poverty, but in wealth hu- 
manity. 1 

TO CRITO. 

It was a saying of Pythagoras, that medicine was of all arts 
the most godlike. Let it prove itself to be so by its making 
the mind, together with the body, the object of its care. 
Otherwise our more excellent part would want help in its 
sickness. 

TO THE PEOPLE OF ELIS AND OLYMPIA. 

You invite me to be present at the Olympic games, and you 
are good enough to send messengers to me for that purpose. 
Come, I certainly would, to witness the contentions of the 
body, if in so doing I were not leaving the greater spectacle 
of contending virtue. 

TO THE NOBLES OF SELEUCIS. 

That city which pays to men of worth the same kind of 
deference with which it approaches deity, may be called 
happy. In such a state virtue is encouraged and illustrated. 
To take the lead in the intercourse of beneficence is not diffi- 
cult, though it is that which is the most admirable among 
men. But to make a return upon a par with the benefit re- 
ceived, is not only not easy, but exceeds the power of man. 

1 Both the Greek and Latin languages have terms to express the distinction 
and contrast imported in this pithy observation of Apollonius, which our own 
language does not possess. The Greek of Apollonius runs thus : — Aet ■xzvi.aQai 
fitv ojq avSpa, 7t\ovteiv Se mq avQpioirov. In paupertate quidem ut virum, in 
divitiis veio ut hominem versari oportet. 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 343 

For that which is second in the order of time, can never be 
upon a level with that which belongs to the first mover in the 
interchange of benefits. So that to be upon a parity with those 
who have not in words only, but in verity and in deed, done us 
essential good, we must call heaven to our assistance, as it is 
above the ability of men. Your invitation to me to come 
among you, proceeds from your benevolence and generosity 
towards me, which is met on my part by an equal alacrity 
in accepting the summons. The messengers you have sent 
upon this occasion, are doubly welcome, as being my personal 
friends. 

TO EUPHRATES. 

I am often asked, and by yourself among others, how it hap- 
pens that I am not sent for into Italy; or if invited, why I do 
not repair thither. To the first interrogation I shall give no 
answer, as I would not be thought either to know the reason, 
or to care about it. As to the second, what other answer does 
it become me to give, than that I would rather be sent for 
than go. 

TO THE ROMAN QU^STORS. 

You exercise a high command. If you know how to rule, how 
happens it that the cities under your government are in a de- 
clining state. If you know not how to rule, it becomes you 
first to learn, and then to rule. 

TO THE RULERS OF ASIA. 

What signifies lopping trees that throw out noxious branches, 
if the roots are left. 

TO THE LEARNED FREQUENTERS OF THE MUSEUM 

I have visited Argos, Phocis, Locris, Sicyon, and Megara ? 
and formerly I was accustomed to hold disputations, and to 
lecture, in those places. I have left off the practice. Do you ask 
why? Take, or let the Muses take this answer. I am become 
a Barbarian ; not only while absent from Greece, but while in 
Greece itself. 



344 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 



TO HISTIJEUS. 

Virtue and riches are things not only differing from each 
other, but mutually repugnant. The increase of the one is the 
decrease of the other, and so inversely. How then can the 
one consist with the other in the same person ; unless I am 
addressing one, who, in his foolish judgment, blends the two 
things together. Do not permit such persons to mistake us, 
or to class us with the rich rather than with the wise. It is, 
indeed, very disgraceful to make long journeys for the ac- 
quisition of wealth, when to be remembered by posterity many 
deem it too much to pay to virtue the slightest homage, or 
even to salute her as they pass. 

TO VESPASIAN. 

You have reduced Greece, they say, under your dominion ; 
and you think that you have greater possessions than Xerxes. 
But you do not know that you have less than Nero, for Nero 
could afford to throw away some of his empire. Nero when 
at play gave the Greeks their liberty. You have in good ear- 
nest, and with great effort, brought them under the yoke. 2 

2 This alludes to the ridiculous figure made by Nero at the Olympic games. 
Suetonius thus relates the incident. The Greek cities in which contests in 
music were publicly celebrated were in the habit of sending to Nero all the 
crowns obtained by the victors in these combats ; on which occasions he re- 
ceived the messengers with great honour and distinction, gave them audience, 
and admitted them at his table. Being requested by them, at one of these 
entertainments to sing, he complied, and being extravagantly applauded, he 
declared that the Greeks only had a good ear for harmony, and that they were 
alone worthy of him and his talents. So pleased was he with the com- 
pliments he had received, that he resolved upon a visit to Greece, and forth- 
with set out upon the expedition. Landing at Cassiopea on the coast of 
Epirus, he proceeded immediately to the altar of Jupiter Cassius and com- 
menced singing. He next repaired to Olympia, and though the games there 
were held at certain intervals, he ordered them to be all celebrated in one year, 
and some to be repeated several times. Contrary to usage he directed the con- 
test in music to be added to the other games. When the Prince sung, no one 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 345 



TO PHRUCIANUS. 

Your letters have given me great satisfaction. They were full 
of the friendship and familiarity which should season the in- 
tercourse of relations, and remind them of their common des- 
cent. They have convinced me that you are desirous of seeing 
me, as I am also of seeing you. As soon as I can I will come 
to you. You will, therefore, wait for me where you now are. 
But when I come, I shall expect that you will devote yourself 
to conversation and intercourse with me in preference to all 
your other friends and acquaintance, as it will be highly be- 
coming in you to do. 

TO HIS BROTHER APOLLONIUS, CONSOLING HIM FOR 
THE LOSS OF HIS WIFE. 

It is the appointment of Nature that every individual after 
having fulfilled his destiny here takes his leave of this earth ; 
and old age usually closes the scene. After which he vacates 
his place, and disappears. 

Let it not afflict you so sorely that your wife is taken from 
you in the flower of her age. Nor when death is the subject, 
suppose that life is always to be preferred to it, since wise 

was permitted on any account to leave the theatre, where they were detained so 
long, and such was the fatigue and lassitude occasioned by the heat and tedious- 
ness of the performance, that, the doors being all shut, many escaped by 
dropping from the wall, and some feigned themselves dead, that they might be 
carried out to their friends. In performing a part in a tragedy he once dropped 
his sceptre, at which he was greatly dispirited and alarmed, but was composed 
again on being assured by one of the actors, that the plaudits and acclamations 
of the people hindered the accident from being observed. He contended also 
in the chariot race, and having undertaken one drawn by ten horses, he was 
thrown out, and being replaced, found himself unable to endure the concussions 
of the vehicle : he was nevertheless crowned as victor. Before leaving Greece he 
made a solemn donation of liberty from the Roman yoke to the entire pro- 
vince, and complimented the judges with the privilege of Roman citizens and 
a large sum of money : which grant and -bounty he himself proclaimed from 
the stadium with his own voice. 



346 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

men have, on weighing well the question, determined the con- 
trary. Shew yourself to be my brother ; the near kinsman of 
a philosopher ; of the family of Pythagoras and Apollonius. 
I recommend you to form a fresh matrimonial connexion. If 
you had no fault to find with your former marriage, why re- 
fuse to engage in another similar connexion. If to her life's 
end she whom you have lost was a chaste and loving com- 
panion, and worthy of all honour, why should we not cherish 
the hope and expectation of another deserving to take her 
place ? It is even probable that a future wife may be excited 
by the example of her predecessor to go even beyond her in 
zeal and prudence. Let the state of your brothers be a con- 
sideration of weight with you ; the eldest having never yet 
married, and the youngest, though cherishing the natural 
hopes of posterity, yet liable to the casualties which time may 
interpose. We are three sprung from one, and from us three 
not one has yet proceeded. The same uncertainty impends 
over the fate of our country, and those who should come after 
us. If we have advanced in our attainments beyond our 
father, why may we not hope that those who shall spring 
from us, may be better than ourselves. May those receive 
their existence from us to whom we may give our names, as 
our ancestors have done. My tears render me unable to write 
more, and, indeed, I have nothing to say which seems more 
necessary to be urged, on the present occasion, than what I 
have above suggested. 

TO THE SENATE AND PEOPLE OF TYANA. 

I feel I ought to obey when you desire me to return to you ; 
for it reflects equal credit upon the Republic and the in- 
dividual, when for the sake of doing him honour it sends for 
one of its absent citizens. And here I may be allowed to say, 
though it may be thought boastful, that, during the time con- 
sumed in my travels, I have acquired glory and fame; and the 
friendship of renowned cities and illustrious men. But if you 
deem yourselves worthy of something greater and more emi- 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 347 

nent, all my powers and abilities, such as they are, shall be 
exerted to give you satisfaction. 



Such are some of the letters said to have been written by 
this man of wonder-working memory, without doubt an ex- 
traordinary person, and possessed of a remarkable genius for 
imposing upon mankind. Kingdoms and commonwealths, 
as well as the most distinguished men, were ambitious of the 
honour of his friendship. The circumstances, which gave oc- 
casion to the account of Apollonius by Philostratus, are suffi- 
cient of themselves to bring the performance under suspicion ; 
being undertaken at the suggestion of a heathen empress, with 
the evident design of setting up, in the supernatural perform- 
ances ascribed to the heathen philosopher, a counter-testimony 
to the evangelical record of the miracles of our blessed Saviour : 
but the internal evidence is so condemnatory of the work as 
to leave no doubt of its being a tissue of gross and impudent 
falsehoods. The parallel maintained throughout the whole 
fabrication, with the course of the Gospel narrative, shews it 
to have been a palpable contrivance of the enemies of our 
faith to disparage the proofs on which the Christian verities 
repose, by inflating, to the same magnitude, the wonders 
attributed to the pagan impostor. For the extraordinary 
achievements of this vain philosopher, we have only the au- 
thority of Philostratus, who wrote his history long after the 
subject of it had been withdrawn. There was, it appears, a 
life of Apollonius written by one Mseragenes, as we learn from 
Origen; 3 but, as Meeragenes happened to treat Apollonius as 
a magician and impostor, it did not suit the purpose of the 
sophist to adopt or recognise his authority. Nor, indeed, does 
he pretend to derive his facts from any credible source, but 
partly from rumour and hearsay, and partly from the account 
handed to him by the Empress Julia, who was told by some- 
body not named, that it was furnished by one Damis, a com- 

3 Contr. Cels. 1. vii. 102. 



348 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

panion of Apollonius, first introduced to the world upon this 
occasion. The whole story has, in fact, no other voucher but 
Philostratus himself, — a voluptuary in sentiment ; a sophist 
by profession ; and a notorious forger of falsities in support of 
his own opinions. 

At the end of the epistolary productions collected by Aldus 
and Cujacius we find a letter of Musonius which merits our 
regard by the solid and substantial worth of its instructions. 
It seems there were two Musonius's, both celebrated teachers, 
and experiencing at the hand of the Emperor Nero a similar ill 
treatment, but differing in their scholastic tenets and con- 
nexions, the one being a Cynic, and the other a Stoic, and 
very ardent disseminator of the principles of that sect. This 
last-mentioned philosopher, whose entire designation was Caius 
Musonius Rufus, was by birth of the equestrian order, a pre- 
fect of the public fortifications and military works, and pos- 
sessed of various knowledge and acquirements. His attain- 
ments and general respectability made Nero his enemy, and 
caused him to be banished to Gyaros, a small island among 
the sporades in the iEgean sea, which, in the time of the Em- 
perors of Rome, was often used as a place of exile. Being 
recalled by Vespasian, he renewed his studies and instructions 
at Rome, with so large a share of the imperial favour, that 
when the philosophers were expelled from Italy, he alone was 
permitted to remain. His precepts were remarkable for their 
adaptation to the substantial interests and practical benefits 
of society, and these precepts he is said to have illustrated and 
confirmed by his own correct example. 

Of Musonius the Cynic there exists but a scanty and uncer- 
tain account. We have some intelligence concerning a Muso- 
nius, who probably was the Cynic philosopher, in the Sixteenth 
chapter of the fourth book of the marvellous Life of Apollo- 
nius, by Philostratus. At the end of his foolish story of the 
damsel restored to life by his hero, there is a short corres- 
pondence between him and Musonius, then in prison under 
an edict of Nero, forbidding philosophers to exercise their 
profession in Rome. The four short letters which passed 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 341) 

between them according to Philostratus were in the following 
regular epistolary form. 

APOLLONIUS TO MUSONIUS. 

I am desirous of coming to you, to be under the same roof, 
and to discourse with you; and to afford you what assistance 
I can. If you have no doubt that I can accomplish as much 
as Hercules when he delivered Theseus from hell, signify in 
writing what you wish me to do. Farewell. 

MUSONIUS TO APOLLONIUS. 

For what you meditate and propose, you are entitled to praise. 
But he who expects to clear himself from the crime he is 
charged with, by establishing his innocence, will be able to 
deliver himself. 

APOLLONIUS TO MUSONIUS. 

Socrates, the Athenian, when he refused to be liberated 
from prison by his friends, proceeded to trial, and yet was 
put to death. 

MUSONIUS TO APOLLONIUS. 

Socrates died because he prepared no defence for himself, 
but it is my intention to defend myself. 



Such is the vapid interlude inserted by Philostratus in the 
lying legend of the achievements of Apollonius. The letter, 
which appears at the end of the collections of Aldus and Cuja- 
cius, was probably written by or for Caius JMusonius Rufus the 
Stoic philosopher, respecting whom some particulars have been 
mentioned. We meet with this Musonius in more than one 
place in Tacitus, occupying a position very creditable to his 
character, and I believe it is to this Musonius that, among 
other just reflections, is to be assigned the following much 
celebrated aphorism. " If you perform anything good with 
labour, the labour vanishes, but the good remains : if you do a 



350 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

base thing with delight, the delight vanishes and the disgrace 
remains." 4 I am induced by the respect due to the author 
of so wise a proposition to lay before the reader a portion of 
his letter. 



MUSONIUS TO PANCRATIDA. 

Being led to infer both from the reports which reach me con- 
cerning you, and from the letters which you yourself send to 
your children, that your views of philosophy are not what the 
vulgar entertain, but such as are more consonant to your 
quality and character, I deem it right to offer you my present 
congratulations, and my future wishes and prayers, that their 
thoughts may never be turned in any other direction, and that 
the resolutions which they have now formed they may main- 
tain to the end of their lives, thus making the best return to 
you for the benefits you will have conferred on them. As 
there are two principal means whereby the course of this life 
is best regulated, prudence and self-government, how is it 
possible for us to do our duty towards ourselves or others 
while we couple in our characters ignorance with intemper- 
ance. To advance therefore in philosophy our minds must 
be in a state of freedom from these obstructions. The true 
end of our being born into this world is to live under the 
restraints of moderation and virtue ; our minds being furnished 
by nature with reason and intelligence as governors and guides 
for this purpose. Our only way of being cured of folly and 
intemperance is to put ourselves under the remedies which 

4 Av tl rrpaZrjQ icaXov /xsra ttovov, 6 /asp irovoc, oi%erai, to ds icaXov fievei ; 
av ri 7rou]<jf]Q aia\gov fitra yjdovrjg to \lzv r/dv oi%£-ai, to 8s aiaxpov fievet. 
Aul. Gell. Noct. Att. L. xvi. c. 1. Aulus Gellius takes notice of a remark- 
able coincidence between the celebrated aphorism of Musonius and a senti- 
ment which fell from the lips of Cato, in an oration pronounced by him when 
with his army in Numantia, which, as being of older date, he says, is more 
entitled to veneration. " Cogitate cum animis vestris, si quid vos per labo- 
rem recte feceritis, labor ille a vobis cito recedet ; bene factum a vobis, dum 
vivetis non abscedet : sed si qua per voluptatem nequiter feceritis, voluptas 
cito abibit, nequiter factum illud apud vos semper manebit." 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTLiATUS 351 

reason supplies. This in a manner goes before us, and what- 
ever in our original dispositions is disorderly and corrupt, our 
depraved judgments and inward perversity, this roots out 
from the mind, while it introduces a new health into the 
bosom, and strengthens what is weak within us. These 
principles, after they have thus received this accession of 
strength and firmness, point to the way of duty through our 
whole lives, and what we feel to be right and reasonable is 
thus made to be in harmony with our inclinations. 

While you not only set before you, but actually carry on 
this medicinal treatment of the soul, what skill can you call 
in, more effectual than your own, for promoting the welfare of 
your children ; for must it not be the great object of your soli- 
citude as a father, and that for which you would undergo any- 
thing, that you may see your children classed among the good ? 
Is it not for this that you have given them existence, and 
have made them the continual subject of your prayers ? If you 
are anxious for them to become thus virtuous and honourable, 
will you not desire to see them restraining themselves in their 
food and drink, and in all their natural appetites, content with 
a limited portion of sleep, and clothed in plain attire, simple 
and sufficient for protection and covering? You would desire 
to see them with a countenance and gait so marked by modesty 
and discretion, as that no one may dare in their sight to do 
or utter anything indecorous; and so full of energy as to be 
ready, when they wish or feel it expedient, to put forth all 
their strength in the fulfilment of the great design of their 
creation. Would you not wish that, elevating their views to 
the highest objects, human and divine, they may comport 
themselves towards the gods with piety and sanctity, and 
towards men with justice and integrity. Though you are a 
parent, yet if you are wise, yoir would wish your children to 
prefer their country to their parents; their parents to their 
kindred and friends. And you will consider the honour of a 
parent greatly concerned in reprehending and expostulating 
with those among their kindred, if any are leading others 
astray. You will wish also to see your children thankful for 



352 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

the kind offices you have done them, and retaining them in 
grateful remembrance. They must requite the old services 
of their parents with new benefits as the only mode of pay- 
ment, and be ready to defend them at all hazards, if even 
necessity should require the sacrifice of life itself in their 
cause. It is their duty to bear with meekness the anger of 
their parents, though it should vent itself not only in words, 
but in blows and wounds, and although it should proceed 
from passion rather than reason; and in such a case to be 
more afraid for their parents than themselves, lest they should 
do anything unbecoming their characters. What, indeed, 
would you yourselves not undergo that you might be per- 
suaded that your children were destined to live together all 
their lives in family concord and harmony with all related 
to them, following the same studies and recreations. Unless 
you are desirous that these qualities shall exist in the minds 
of your children so as to raise them above the fear of death, 
labour, and human opinion, they will be liable to be agitated 
and carried to and fro like the servile vulgar, when any evil, 
however contemptible, comes upon them. Our forefathers 
more easily surmounted these common ills, than we, from 
a certain perversity of nature, are able to do. Surely you 
would be very sorry to see a principle grow up in your chil- 
dren's minds that would dispose them to make money the 
measure of all things, and to sacrifice all their nearest ties and 
connexions to the accumulation of wealth ; or to be desirous 
of possessing more than necessity, and the support of them- 
selves and those depending upon them, required ; rather should 
they learn to despise all that superfluous wealth, by which men 
are impelled to the commission of many public and private 
acts, by which they bring disgrace upon themselves. Should 
not the object of our ambition rather be to attain to the dignity 
of exercising command, and dispensing law according to the 

rules and principles of justice.- Therefore, O Pancra- 

tida, resolve not only to permit but to exhort and encourage 
your children to cultivate philosophy, and to educate them 
in the fearless habit of expressing suitably and boldly their 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 353 

opinions. If you thus proceed in their education, you will 
be justified in saying to all those related to you that you 
have not only introduced to them children, but such children ; 
and to your country, that you have not merely added to the 
number of its citizens, but that you have given to it good and 
virtuous citizens. 



Hadrian, 5 the immediate successor of Trajan, appears to 
have been a prince of extraordinary abilities ; and, if we credit 
what is related of him by his biographers, especially by iElius 
Spartianus, he was all-accomplished, (in omnibus artibus 
peritissimus) though his literary judgment is brought into 
some doubt by his alleged preference of Ennius to Virgil, 
Caecilius to Sallust, and his favourite Antimachus to Homer 
and Plato. He was the most excursive and various traveller 
among the ancient professors of letters and philosophy ; and, 
considering his extensive intercourse with the learned men of 
his time, it is rather remarkable that little or nothing of his 
familiar correspondence has been preserved ; especially as 
the care of his letters formed a regular department in the 
arrangements of the imperial household, entrusted to Helio- 
dorus, 6 (qui ab epistolis fuit) a person in great repute for 
wisdom, and, as some say, the associate of Epictetus. There 
are extant, however, two or three letters imputed to Hadrian, 
which are interesting ; and, among others, a very pretty greek 
epistle to his mother, which we find in a note of Casaubon to 
the life of this prince, by iElius Spartianus. It is in the terms 
following. 

5 The name of this Emperor is always Hadrian on his coins. When the 
name occurs in Greek, it is usually 'Adpiavog, leni spiritu, with a soft 
breathing. 

6 Salmasius rather thinks, that not this Heliodorus, but another of that 
name, was the friend of Epictetus ; and that the Heliodorus here spoken of, as 
presiding over the correspondence department, was the Emperor's freedman, 
to whom somebody said, " on Kaiaap xP r ll xaTa \*>w ff oi kcli Tifirjv dovvat 
dvvarai, prjtopa 8e <xe 7coir)<rai ov Svvarai" Caesar may, indeed, give you 
wealth and honour, but he cannot make you a rhetorician. 

Favorinus, too, was a special friend of Hadrian, whose good sense was 

A A * 



354 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 



HADRIAN TO HIS MOTHER. 



I give you joy, my most excellent and revered mother. Your 
prayers for me are returned on my part by prayers equally 
earnest for you. Your piety and sanctity of life must give 
much efficacy to your supplications. I do indeed rejoice that 
you are so pleased with my conduct, and deem it so worthy of 
commendation. You know, mother, that this day is my birth- 
day, — a day on which our family ought to sup together. If 
it is agreeable to you, therefore, come early, with my sisters, 
that we may the longer together enjoy your company. Sabina 
has been obliged to go into the country, but she has sent to 
us the usual little contributions 7 to our feast. Do not delay 
to come to us, that we may unite our vows and supplications. 8 



From Eusebius, it appears, that the Christians suffered much 
from their heathen oppressors in the reign of Hadrian ; but 
chiefly from the Rulers of Provinces, and the unrestrained 
fury of the common people. In these sad circumstances an 
appeal was made to the Emperor by some Christians of emi- 
nent courage and piety, in behalf of their persecuted brethren ; 
among whom were Quadratus, bishop of Athens, and Aristides, 
a Christian philosopher of the same city. If these men by 
their writings and discourses were not able to make Hadrian 
a Christian, they did, at least, bring him to see and acknow- 

shewn in his reply to one who blamed him for submitting to the Emperor's 
correction of a word which he (Favorinus) had used in conversing with him. 
" Your counsel is not judicious. You do not perceive that a man with thirty 
legions at his command must have the better in argument." 

7 (nrvpica, munuscula, birth-day presents. The primary sense of (nrvpig 
is a basket, but in a secondary or metonymical sense, it means, the little deli- 
cacies in the basket. 

8 On their birth-days the Romans offered up their vows and supplications 
for their own health and that of their friends ; eumque diem cognati et pro- 
pinqui communi religione concelebrabant. 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 355 

ledge the cruelty and disgrace of abandoning to the mercy of 
prejudiced magistrates and a furious populace, so large a part 
of the subjects of his empire. Orders were issued for a more 
equitable and moderate treatment of the Christians, and we 
have the Emperor's letters on this occasion to Minutius Fun- 
danus, the proconsul of Asia, in the following terms. 



HADRIAN TO MINUTIUS FUNDANUS, PROCONSUL. 

I have received a letter from Serenius Granianus, your emi- 
nent predecessor ; and I think the matter of that letter is not 
such as should be passed over without due enquiry ; as it is 
my desire that the Christians may not, without cause, be dis- 
quieted, nor informers have occasion and encouragement given 
them for false accusations. If the subjects of our provinces 
can openly appear to their indictments against the Christians, 
let them take that course, and not proceed against them with 
mere noise and clamour. If any accusation be preferred, it is 
proper that you should have it brought under your cogni- 
zance as proconsul. If any one shall bring a regular charge 
against these Christians, and it is proved that they have 
transgressed the laws, give sentence against them according 
to the quality of the offence proved ; but if he shall appear 
to have brought it only out of spite and malice, take care to 
punish that person according to the wickedness of so malig- 
nant a purpose. 



In consequence of the above letter, the persecution of the 
Christians ceased, after it had continued about a year and a 
half; and the Emperor's good humour with the Christians 
was such that it was said he entertained the design of build- 
ing a temple to Christ, and to receive him into the number 
of the gods. He commanded temples to be built every- 
where without images, which were, as long as the command 
was enforced, distinguished by the name of Hadriani ; but 



356 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

the order appears to have been withdrawn upon its being 
represented to the Emperor, that the oracle had said, in an- 
swer to those who had consulted it, that if this course was 
persisted in, the pagan temples would be deserted, and all 
men would become Christians. 

Another Epistle of this active Emperor is interesting, espe- 
cially at this juncture, as tending to shew the instability of 
the Egyptian character. 9 

HADRIAN TO SERVIANUS. 

The Egyptians, whom you are pleased to commend to me, I 
know thoroughly from a close observation, to be a light, 
fickle, and inconstant people, changing with every turn of 
fortune. The Christians among them are worshippers of Sera- 
pis, and those calling themselves bishops of Christ scruple 
not to act as the votaries of that God. The truth is, there is 
no one, whether Ruler of a synagogue, or Samaritan, or 
Presbyter of the Christians, 10 or mathematician, or astrologer, 
or magician, that does not do homage to Serapis. The Pa- 
triarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is by some com- 
pelled to worship Serapis, and by others, Christ. 11 It is a race 



9 The connexion of France with Egypt is not more a subject of suspicion 
and apprehension now, than it was at the period to which our attention is 
drawn. When Saturninus, the general of Aurelian, which Saturninus was 
born in France, was invested with a high Asiatic command, it was stipulated 
that he should not visit, nor hold any intercourse with Egypt ; as that sagacious 
Emperor wisely foresaw, that if the restless disposition of a Gaul should come 
into coalition with the Egyptian character, no less irritable and unstable, a com- 
motion might ensue which would throw the world into confusion. 

10 Videntur multi Christianorum iEgyptiorum, ad Hadriani adventum aut 
mutasse religionem, aut intermissa ejus professione, ad tempus dissimulasse; 
quae res occasionem illi praebuit ea scribendi de iEgyptiorum etiam in religione 
levitate, quae hie legimus. Satis constat ex historia ecclesiastica accidisse 
hoc non raro in ea provincia. Exemplo sit, quod scriptum est in veteri 
martyrologio in historia de Epimacho Martyre JEgyptio. Casaubon in Not. 
ad Vopisc. de Saturnino. 

11 It does not seem that Hadrian, traveller as he was, exercised a very cau- 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 357 

of men, of all the most seditious, vain and mischievous. The 
state is powerful, rich, and abounding, and of so active a dis- 
position, that no one is allowed to live without occupation. 
Some are glass-blowers, some paper-makers, some weavers of 
thread. All are professors of some one art or other. The 
blind, and those who have the gout in their feet or hands, 
find something to do. There is one God whom all worship 
(Serapis) both Christians, Jews, and Gentiles. I wish this 
place maintained a better character, worthy of its rank as the 
first city 12 in Egypt. I have made great and liberal grants to 
it. I have restored to it its ancient privileges ; I have laid it 
under much obligation by immediate benefits; and after all, 
as soon as I had left this people, they began to calumniate 
my son Verus, and I reckon you have heard what they have 
said concerning Antoninus. I wish them no further harm, 
than that they may live upon their own chickens, hatched on 
their own dunghills, according to that disgusting practice of 
theirs, which it is disagreeable even to allude to. 

I have sent you some of those variegated cups 13 so remark- 
able for their diversity of colors, in different lights, which 
were given to me by a priest of the temple, and are now dedi- 
cated to you and my sister, which I wish you to exhibit when 
you entertain your friends on festal days. Take care they do 



tious enquiry into facts. Although he had discovered the levity of the people of 
Egypt, and how unworthy they were of credit, he seems to have credulously 
listened to what their hatred both of Jews and Christians induced them to re- 
present concerning them. He talks of the Patriarch's occasional visits to 
Alexandria ; whereas it is well known that he held his fixed residence there. 
That the Patriarch, whether Justus, or his successor Eumenes, was compelled 
by violence to do some outward homage to Serapis may be near the truth, but 
that he was made against his will to pay adoration to Christ, is not to be credited. 

12 Alexandria. 

13 Calices allassontes, versicolores. The cup here mentioned was called 
allasson, aXkaaawv, from its changing its colours, according to the lights in 
which it was presented : for the glassy material of which it was composed was 
stained or painted with various colours. Nee enim alia, says Pliny, materia 
sequacior, aut etiam picturae accommodatior. Strabo (lib. xvi.) relates, that 
he had heard from the operators in glass, in Alexandria, that there was a cer- 
tain vitreous earth in Egypt, without which these variegated chalices could not 



358 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

not fall into the hands of our little Africanus, 14 to use them as 
he pleases. « 



It is very doubtful how many of the letters exhibited as 
the productions of the Imperial philosopher, Marcus V. Aure- 
lius Antoninus, can be admitted as genuine, though there may 
be good reason to suppose him to have diffused, by letters, 
many of his wise and learned precepts and opinions. Philos- 
tratus mentions him among those who, in his opinion, excelled 
in this species of composition. 

His letters to the ladies of Rome, to his mistress Bohemia, 
to Matrina, to his friend Pyramon, to Domitius of Capua, to 
his friend Cincinnatus, and some to his Empress Faustina, 
may be classed with the most contemptible of literary frauds, 
deserving only the indignation of posterity as tending to 
detract from the worth and wisdom of the great man, whose 
name they have abused. Two of his imputed letters, in Greek, 
seem entitled to somewhat more credit, though open to much 
doubt — the one said to be written by him to the common 
council or assembly of the states in Asia, Upog kolvov tkiq 
AaiaQ EnHTToXr), — and the other to the senate of Rome, bear- 
ing testimony to the fact of a great victory having been ob- 
tained for him over the barbarians, among the Pannonian 
mountains, by the prayers of the Christian soldiery, then 
composing a part of one of the legions of the Roman army. 

The first of the two last above-mentioned letters is fur- 
nished by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 14, c y 13, and by him as- 



be manufactured. Implements in glass were common in Rome, and sold for 
a trifle ; but the chalices made in Egypt, (allassontes) of which Hadrian 
speaks, were very precious. These cups were often curiously moulded and 
sculptured, " Aliud flatu figuratur, aliud torno teritur, aliud argenti modo 
cselatur. The great men in Imperial Rome were often curious in these articles. 
They sometimes used cups made of gold, and studded sometimes with costly 
gems, Calices gemmati, and hence Servus ab auro gemmato, in old inscrip- 
tions. 

14 Probably a son of Servianus, of tender age. 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 359 

signed to Marcus, though the same has been asserted by- 
Valerius to have been written by Antoninus Pius. It is also 
extant in the apology of Justin Martyr, The first letter runs 
thus:— The Emperor Caesar, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 
Augustus, Armenicus, Pontifex Maximus, Tribune the 15th, 
and Consul the 3d time, to the General Council of Asia, 
Greeting. 

" I well know that the vigilance of the gods will provide that 
men such as you describe, shall not escape them : for it more 
properly belongs to them to punish those who refuse to give 
them the homage, to which they are entitled, than to you ; 
who, by pursuing these men with such fury, only render them 
more fixed and determined in their opinions and purposes ; 
for they covet the opportunity afforded them by being brought 
before the magistrate, of shewing that in the cause of their 
God they prefer death to safety. They would rather throw 
away their lives than do what you would have them, and 
thus from all their inflictions they come out conquerors. 
When the earth has been shaken and convulsed, remember 
how your minds have been filled with terror, and do justice 
to them in comparison with yourselves in this respect. Such 
occasions serve only to shew their trust in their God. While 
you in the same circumstances, though without any resources 
in yourselves, neglect the worship of the gods, and look not 
for immortal aid. The Christians, who seek that aid, you 
drive away, and persecute to the death. Concerning these 
men, many governors of provinces have heretofore written to 
our deified parent, whom he answered by ordering them to do 
them no injury, unless they should be found to be engaged 
in mischievous designs against the Roman empire, 

" Furthermore, many have made an ill report of them to 
me, to whom I have answered in terms agreeing with my 
father's sentiments — that if any should persist in bringing 
these men before the tribunals on the charge only of their 
being Christians, let them be acquitted, if no other crime is 
proved against them ; and let the accuser be punished for the 
wrong done to them." 



360 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

The second is also exhibited by the same historian, but is 
treated as fictitious by Scaliger, and as the invention of some 
sophist ignorant of Roman affairs. The miraculous fact is, 
however, circumstantially related by Dion Cassius, who as- 
cribes it to the Divine power assisting the Emperor ; and 
Tertullian, within twenty-six years after the event, appeals to 
the letters of Marcus in testimony of the miracle. The case 
is thus narrated — The Emperor, though with a powerful and 
victorious army under his command, yet finding his forces 
greatly weakened by fatigue, hunger, and thirst, began to feel 
his situation in the passes of the mountains to be one of great 
danger, as well from the want of the supports of nature, as 
from the attacks of a fierce and numerous enemy, to whom all 
the defiles and recesses of the country were well known. In 
this perilous crisis, having offered the usual prayers and sacri- 
fices to his Deities, and seeing that no good resulted from 
them, he began to suspect the contempt of the gods enter- 
tained by the Christian soldiers to be the cause of his ill- 
success, and was proceeding to deal severely with them, when 
throwing themselves on the ground, they offered up their 
united prayers that the God they carried in their consciences 
would grant relief to the Emperor and his army, who had 
now for five days been without a supply of water. Imme- 
diately the rain fell in refreshing showers upon the space 
occupied by the Romans, but a storm of fire and hail upon 
the Barbarians ; which soon determined the success of the 
day. The Emperor relates the event with a brevity and a 
graphical simplicity, well suited to the man and the occasion ; 
and devotes all to capital punishment who should in future 
bring to trial any man for being a Christian only, without 
being able to sustain against him any further charge. 

The correspondence of Marcus on the imputed treason of 
Avidius Cassius, as related by Vulcanius Gallicanus, is very 
remarkable. He is thus addressed on this subject by his col- 
league Verus. 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 361 



L. VERUS TO MARCUS ANTONINUS. 

Avidius Cassius will be content with nothing less than 
empire. This was well known in the time of my grandfather, 
your father ; and I advise you by all means to have him care- 
fully observed. All our doings are regarded by him with 
hatred ; he is accumulating treasure ; treats our letters with 
derision ; calls you a doting old philosopher ; and me a pam- 
pered profligate. Weigh well what is to be done ; I have no 
personal quarrel with the man ; but it behoves you to consult 
your own and your children's safety, when such persons are 
among your principal officers, listened to and looked up to by 
the army. 

To this Epistle Marcus made the following answer. 

M. A. ANTONINUS TO L. VERUS. 

I have read your letter, and deem it too timorous and dis- 
trustful for an Emperor, and not befitting the situation in 
which we stand. For if the empire is due to him by Divine 
decree, it will be vain for us to resist the dispensation, how- 
ever we may wish to do it; and if not, he will of his own 
accord, without any act of violence on our part, fall into his 
own snares. 15 Add to this, that we can not impeach one 
against whom nobody brings any regular charge ; and espe- 
cially one whom, you yourself say, the soldiers love. Then 
observe that a trial for treason has always this natural conse- 
quence, that the convicted person seems to suffer oppression. 
You remember what your grandfather Hadrian used to say, 
' Miserable is the condition of Emperors, whose accusations of 
treasonable conspiracies are never credited till they have fallen 
a sacrifice to them.' In quoting which observation, I choose 
rather to borrow from Hadrian than from Domitian, to whom, 



15 The reader cannot fail to be reminded by this passage of 37th, 38th, and 
39th verses of the oth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. 



362 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

however, it belongs as the real original author of it ; for say- 
ings which are good in themselves carry with them less weight 
thau really belongs to them when they proceed from the 
mouths of tyrants. Let us leave him then to his own humours, 
since it must be owned he is a good commander, of strict 
manners, brave, and useful to the republic. As to what you 
say of the necessity of securing the lives of my children by 
the death of this man, I plainly tell you I would rather my 
children should perish than Avidius, if he shall prove himself 
more worthy of being loved than they, and if it be better for 
the country that Avidius should live than the children of 
Marcus. 



After Avidius Cassius had been put to death by the army, 
without the consent or knowledge of Marcus, the following 
correspondence took place between the Emperor and the 
Empress Faustina on this subject, " Verus had written to 
me," says the Emperor, " a true statement concerning Avidius 
— that he was ambitious of empire. I presume you heard 
what the informers reported of that person. Come therefore 
to me at Albanum, without fear, that we may consult toge- 
ther about all these matters." The answer of Faustina was 
as follows, " I will come to-morrow r , as you desire, to Alba- 
num. But let me entreat you, as you love your children, 
to punish with the greatest rigour these rebellious proceed- 
ings. Both officers and men have contracted bad habits, and 
must be crushed, or they will crush others. My mother 
Faustina, in a similar rebellion of Celsus, urged your father 
Pius to let his piety manifest itself first in the protection 
of his own kindred, and so he would be the better able to 
make it beneficial to others. It was indeed the part of a pious 
Emperor to make his wife and children his first and princi- 
pal care. Consider the tender age of our Commodus. Our 
kinsman, Pompeianus, is neither young nor noble. Take 
care what you do concerning those involved in the guilt of 
Avidius Cassius. Do not shew mercy to those who had no 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 363 

feeling of mercy towards you ; and who, had they succeeded 
in their designs, would have spared neither me nor your 
children. I am about to follow you ; our little Fadilla has 
been so ill that I was not able to come to Formianum. If 
I do not find you there, I will proceed after you to Capua, 
which place will be beneficial to me as well as your children 
in the present state of our healths. I pray you, send Soterida, 
the physician, to Formianum. I have no confidence in the 
skill of Pisitheus in the treatment of a young female. Cal- 
phurnius has delivered to me your letters under your own 
seal, to which I will return an answer, if I shall delay my 
departure from this place, by old Csecilius, a trusty man, as 
you know ; to whom I shall commit by word, what the wife, 
sons, and son-in-law of Avidius Cassius, boastingly declare 
concerning you." To which letter the following answer was 
sent by the Emperor. " You indeed, my dear Faustina, are 
discharging the duties of a good wife and mother, in sending 
me the letter which I have read attentively in our Formian 
Villa, in which you urge me to vindictive measures against 
those who are implicated in the guilt of Avidius. But not- 
withstanding all you say, my determination is, to spare both 
his children, his son-in-law, and his wife, and to write to the 
Senate to enact no severe sentences either of proscription or 
punishment. For there is nothing that more recommends a 
Roman Emperor to the people under his dominion than cle- 
mency. This deified Csesar; this consecrated Augustus ; this 
adorned your father with the title of Pius. To all this I will 
add, that if my judgment had prevailed in this affair, not 
even Avidius himself would have been put to death. Dismiss 
your alarms ; the powers of Heaven will protect me, for the 
sake of the piety which I feel in my bosom towards them. 
I have named Pompeianus consul for the ensuing year." 



Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus were the two most 
formidable opponents of Septimius Severus, and competitors 
with him for empire. They both sunk under the genius and 



364 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

fortune of that able commander : but they were very consi- 
derable men in the days of Marcus Aurelius, who bears bis 
testimony to their merits in two letters, which, if we may 
credit the Augustan historians, may be respected as genuine. 



MARCUS ANTONINUS TO CORNELIUS BALBUS. 

You write in commendation of Pescennius Niger. I know 
him ; for your predecessor told me he was a man of valour 
and virtue, — that he was already more than the soldier. I have 
therefore sent these letters to be read aloud before the stan- 
dards of the cohorts, by which I have promoted him to the 
command of three hundred Armenians, one hundred Sarma- 
tians, and a thousand of our own men. It is for you to make 
known to the army that this man has not attained by corrupt 
means, or undue influence, (which methods would not be in 
character with my government,) but by merit only, a charge 
which my grandfather Hadrian, and great-grandfather Trajan, 
never confided to any but the most tried and approved officers. 



A letter of the same considerate and humane Emperor on 
the merits of Clodius Albinus, the other rival of Septimius 
Severus, bears marks of the same rectitude of sentiment. 

MARCUS AURELIUS TO HIS PREFECTS. 

I have given to Albinus, of the family of the Cejonii, a son- 
in-law of Plautillus, who, though Africa is his country, has 
little of the African in his genius and disposition, the com- 
mand of two cohorts of light troops. He has seen much hard 
service, is strict in his habits, and severe in his morals. To 
whatever belongs to the management and supply of camps, he 
will be found very serviceable, and I dare answer for his not 
opposing anything that is for their safety and advantage. I 
have thought fit to assign him a double provision and the 
usual military vest, but quadruple the amount of pay belong- 



TO THE TIME OF PHI LOSTRATUS. 365 

ing to his rank. Do you encourage him to present himself to 
his country as a man receiving only the reward due to his 
merits. 



And again in another epistle, written when Avidius Cassius 
was struggling for empire, he thus feelingly expresses himself. 
"The firmness and fidelity of Albinus is highly to be com- 
mended, who by the weight of his authority, kept back the 
army on the point of going over to Avidius Cassius ; and 
doubtless, if he had not been on the spot they would all have 
deserted. We have in him, therefore, a man every way wor- 
thy of the consular dignity ; and whom it is my intention to 
place in the post now filled by Cassius Papirius, who I am 
told is all but dead. But I wish you not to let my intention 
in this matter get abroad, lest it should come to the ears of 
Papirius himself, or in any manner distress or affect his mind, 
and we shall appear to be appointing a successor to him before 
his death." 



The Emperor Severus's letter to the same Clodius Albinus 
shews to what mean artifices the mind of a man, otherwise 
lofty, can be made to descend in the prosecution of his ambi- 
tious ends. To bring his enemy into his hands he thus writes 
to him. 

THE EMPEROR SEVERUS AUGUSTUS TO CLODIUS ALBINUS, 

CiESAR, HIS MOST LOVING AND BELOVED 

BROTHER, HEALTH. 

Having now conquered Pescennius, I have sent letters to 
Rome, which the Senate, from its affection to you, has gladly 
received. I beseech you to join with me in the government 
of the republic with that same spirit which we cherish towards 
each other, my brother in soul, and in empire. Bassianus 
and Geta send their salutations. Our Julia salutes both you 



366 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

and our sister. We shall send to your little son Pescennius 
Prineus some presents suitable to his and your own condi- 
tion. My desire is that you retain the command of the army 
for the republic and myself. 



This letter Severus sent by the hands of some of the most 
devoted of his body guard, with instructions to deliver it in 
public to Albinus, but to accompany the delivery with a 
statement, that they had a private message to communicate 
relating to military affairs, and also to the secrets of the 
camp and the palace ; which would afford a pretext for draw- 
ing him into a secluded place, where they were to dispatch 
him with daggers concealed under their cloaks. These in- 
structions were punctually obeyed. The epistle was delivered 
in public, and after Albinus had read it he was requested to 
withdraw with the messengers into a part of his house where 
he might be conversed with apart from all observation. So 
much care was, it seems, taken to send away every witness 
as they proceeded through a long portico, that the suspicions 
of Albinus were awakened. The messengers were arrested 
and put to the torture to extort a confession, which was fully 
made after some endurance, and Albinus took the field with 
a strong force against the Emperor, but being after various 
success entirely defeated, he was put to death, or as some 
say, died by his own sword. 



The sophist, Philostratus, who, as abovementioned, was in 
great favour with the Empress Julia, wife of Severus, having 
been employed by her to write the life of Apollonius Tyaneus, 
was the author of many letters, which, for spirit and style, 
were probably among the best of the time in which he lived ; 
and such as have been preserved have a probable air of origin- 
ality. They are, however, most of them of the amatory kind, 
and characterised by too much effort, imagery, and refinement. 

We have also some sentiments on the subject of letter- 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 367 

writing from the same pen, in a letter from himself to a cor- 
respondent, which are worthy of attention. He was of opinion, 
that Tyaneus and Dion, among the philosophers, Brutus 
among the military commanders, the divine Marcus among 
princes, and among the Rhetoricians Herodes, the Athenian, 
have given us the best models of epistolary composition ; being 
no less to be admired for their delicacy and perspicuity than 
for the soundness of their principles and the justness of their 
sentiments ; an eulogy hardly to have been expected from one 
whose own epistolary performances were so loose and effemi- 
nate. In this letter of Philostratus, it is well remarked, that 
the epistolary style should be unlaboured and unincumbered ; 
its true place being between the refinement of the Attic, and 
the freedom of common discourse; — above the one and below 
the other, but partaking of both • — not affecting ornament, 
but adopting it in subservience to use and business. Its plan 
should be to have, or at least to seem to have, no plan. Con- 
densation, he thinks, is allowable in short letters, but com- 
pendious and compressed forms of speech he deems to be too 
argumentative, and of too studied a character for such as do 
not aim at brevity ; unless, indeed, there is occasion towards 
the conclusion, to bring together the heads of the letter, or to 
exhibit a summary of foregoing particulars. But he sensibly 
adds that, after all, perspicuity should be our great aim, as it 
is the perfection of all forms of writing, but especially im- 
portant in the composition of letters: whatever be the object 
of the epistle — whether to request, or concede, or accuse, or 
defend, or interrogate, we shall always succeed best, by adopt- 
ing a transparent and natural diction : our aim should be 
to impart the grace of novelty to common thoughts; and 
where our thoughts are new to give them an air of familiarity 
in our manner of exhibiting them. 

Thus Philostratus discusses the graces and defects of the 
epistolary style ; and, perhaps, in so short a compass it would 
not be easy to treat of the subject with more comprehensive- 
ness and precision : but notwithstanding his correct ideas on 
this matter, and the good sense with which he insists on the 



368 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

merit of simplicity and perspicuity, he was himself the most 
distinguished among the sophists, for an ambitious refinement 
of expression and rhetorical artifice. 

Philostratus was a great letter-writer, and, as has been al- 
ready shewn, he has in one of his letters, which stands as a 
preface to the series which follows in the collections trans- 
mitted to us, given certain precepts and rules for this depart- 
ment of composition, not unworthy of being attended to. His 
letters are seldom charged with any useful or acute remarks 
or reflexions : nor can they by any means be recommended, as 
studies for those who wish to be improved in the special art of 
correspondence, or in the general proprieties of graceful ex- 
pression. Erasmus has intimated an opinion in favour of their 
elegance, not forgetting to condemn their want of decency. 
Their elegance will probably be disputed by those who are 
fully sensible of the merit of simplicity in this species of 
composition, and of that humilitas docta in the treatment of 
familiar topics, of which Erasmus speaks in another place. 16 

Philostratus loses himself in the labyrinth of his own con- 
ceits: he is the sophist on whatever subject he is engaged. In 
the amatory letters in which he so delights, he is Anacreon in 
prose, enshrining afresh his sensual imagery without the dra- 
pery of the Muse. The roses stolen from the garland of the 
poet wither in the handling of his pedantic imitator. Never 
surely was a brain so full of the pathos of this flower, and all 
its various applications in the language of love-sick adulation, 
as this languishing sophist. There is hardly an epistle in which 
it is not pressed into the service ; and hardly one which mo- 
desty could peruse without a suffusion deeper than the rose 
itself. It is well for the interests of feminine purity that the 
epistles of Philostratus are in Greek. I find one written to 
his patroness the empress, which is as follows : 



See his Treatise, de Ratione Conscribendi Epistolas. 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 369 



TO JULIA AUGUSTA. 

Divine Plato did not regard the sophists with envious dis- 
like, as is well known; but he did certainly emulate, though 
not envy them in their practice of going from city to city, and 
from town to town, softening and subduing the inhabitants, 
after the manner of Orpheus and Thamyris. He was as far 
above envying another, as emulation is above envy. Envy is 
the quality of perverse and malicious dispositions. Emulation 
actuates minds of the noblest character. A man is properly 
said to envy those things which are above his attainment. 
But those attainable things by which he may hope to improve, 
or advance himself, are the objects of his emulation. I main- 
tain, then, that Plato, thought favourably of the opinions of 
the sophists, and did not yield the superiority to Gorgias him- 
self in the talent of Gorgiazing. He discussed many subjects 
in the style and manner of Hippias and Protagoras. 17 Thus 
the spirit of emulation has been variously directed, and most 

17 About the 85th Olympian and the year 440 before the Christian era, Gorgias 
of Leontium in Sicily, Hippias of Elis, Protagoras of Abdera, and Prodicus of 
Ceos, alluded to in the above letter of Philostratus, and others in imitation of 
them, appear to have arrogated to themselves the name and distinction of wise 
men or sophists, and to have claimed a superiority in the arts of rhetoric and 
disputation, as well as in all the other departments of human knowledge, over 
the rest of mankind. Their dexterity in captivating their hearers by the illusory 
pomp and parade of words, and a very imposing air of profundity in their topics 
or communes loci, procured for them a much higher reputation than they de- 
served. Their practice was to travel from city to city, and from town to town, 
great and small, but generally to the most populous and tumultuous, where they 
harangued in a style fitted to attract the admiration of the crowd. The sound 
maxims of wisdom which had been taught by the Grecian sages were disre- 
garded by them, and though they sometimes argued very plausibly on the side 
of virtue, when it suited their purpose, yet it was apparent to sober and dis- 
cerning men that their zeal was accommodating, variable, and venal ; their real 
object being only their own gain and aggrandizement. They sold their lessons 
and instructions at a stipulated price, and undertook to furnish arguments for 
supporting any hypothesis. Their progress and prevalence in Greece and Sicily 
received a check from the firm hand of Socrates, who, with great force of reason- 
ing exposed their artifices and delusions. After this blow they never entirely 

B B 



370 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

men of eminence have had their imitators, some following one, 
and some another. Gryllus was emulous of the Hercules of 
Prodicus, when he brought vice and virtue contending who 
should have him for her votary. So a great number of 
illustrious persons have been admirers of Gorgias. First, the 
Greeks in Thessaly, among whom the term to Gorgiaze was 
in use to express the exercise of the profession of oratory. 
Then the whole of Greece, among whom, at the Olympic 
games, orations were pronounced against the Barbarians, from 
the enclosures of the temple. Aspasia, the Milesian, is said 
to have exercised the tongue of Pericles in the imitation of 

regained their ascendancy, though they continued to practise their devices, and 
assert their pretensions, till the truths of the Gospel dispensation broke the spell 
of a fascinatiou, by which the minds of men had been more or less deluded 
for many centuries. 

Philostratus commences the letter above produced with an assertion that 
the sophists were held in great esteem by Plato. But this favourable opinion 
of the sect was not intimated in the epithet XoyodaidaXog, which he seems to 
have applied to these professors of the arts of persuasion, whose chief instru- 
ment was a super-refined and affected use of language. 

Cicero introduces to our notice the ancient sophists in language that places 
them full before us. His words are these : " Sed ut intellectum est quantam 
vim haberet accurata et facta quodammodo oratio ; turn etiam magistri dicendi 
multi subito extiterunt. Turn Leontinus Gorgias, Thrasymachus Chalcedo- 
nius, Protagoras Abderites, Prodicus Cejus, Hippias Eleus, in honore magno 
fuit; aliique multi temporibus eisdem docere se profitebantur, arrogantibus 
sane verbis, quemadmodum causa inferior (ita enim loquebantur) dicendo fieri 
superior possit. lis opposuit sese Socrates." Brutus VIII. And in another 
place he says of Hippias Eleus, that when he came to Olympia, " maxima 
ilia quinquennali celebritate ludorum," he boasted in the hearing of almost all 
Greece, that there was nothing in any art of which he was ignorant. Not only 
in the liberal arts, such as geometry, music, general literature, poetry, morals, 
and politics; but that the ring on his finger, the cloak he had on, and the 
shoes or slippers he wore were the manufacture of his own hands. And 
Gorgias, in the book of Plato, which bears his name, is represented as under- 
taking to speak at large on any subject which could be proposed. 

Quintilian, in his chapter " De Scriptoribus Rhetoricae," gives a succinct 
account of the series of the ancient sophists. Empedocles of Agrigentum, 
according to some, gave the first start to the enquiries into the rhetorical art ; 
and Gorgias is said to have been one of his scholars. The most ancient pro- 
pagators of the precepts of oratory, and embellished composition, were the 
same Gorgias, Corax, and Tesias, all of Sicily. Gorgias lived to the age of one 
hundred and nine, and survived Socrates. During the protracted period of 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 371 

Gorgias; and it is well known that Critias and Thucydides 
acquired their loftiness of style from the same model, which 
gave to each his appropriate distinction, — to the one a remark- 
able readiness, to the other an equally remarkable vigour of 
expression. And iEschines, a disciple of Socrates, whom you 
lately so highly praised, was not afraid in the oration which he 
wrote concerning the Thargelia to imitate Gorgias's manner. 18 
Transcripts and copies of the orations of Gorgias were dis- 
persed over many places, and particularly among the epic 



Gorgias's life, a multitude of sophists composed his retinue, and worked upon 
his pattern, principally Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, Prodicus of Ceos, and 
Protagoras of Abdera, (to whom Evathlus is said to have paid ten thousand 
denarii for his instructions in the art of Rhetoric) Hippias Eleus, Alcedamus 
Eleates, Antiphon of Rhamnusia, (who was the first that committed an oration 
to writing,) Polycrates of Athens, (by whom an oration was composed against 
Socrates,) and Theodoras of Byzantium, which last was one of a number called 
by Plato \oyo8aida\oi. Of these, according to Quintilian, the four named, 
Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, and Thrasymachus, were the first who treated 
generally of the common rules and topics of the Rhetorician's art. After these 
a numerous succession followed, and the schools of rhetoric began to overflow. 
In Rome, also, a similar order of writers and propounders of rules in the art 
of oratory, and the graces of composition, appeared, beginning with Antonius. 
But it seems that Marcus Cato, the censor, did also something- in this way : 
" Condidit aliqua in hanc materiam M. Cato ille censorius." If the most 
celebrated teachers of oratorical composition appear to have derived their tact 
and skill in a great measure from a sophistical source, the most eminent in the 
art by degrees shook off their trammels, and leaving to the schools of the 
sophists their artifices and boastful pretensions, adopted a method and course 
more consistent with conscientious principles and honourable and sincere 
practice. 

18 The specimen here given of Gorgiazing, or writing after the manner of 
Gorgias, is not very intelligible. It seems to consist in the words ^frraXiav, 
BsrraXu), and SzttoXuv. The effect of the jingle might depend principally on 
placing the accent in the pronunciation of the words. The iEschines alluded 
to in the above letter of Philostratus was a hearer of Socrates, and thence gene- 
rally designated iEschines Socraticus. There are three remaining dialogues of 
this iEschines. One may perceive by this letter how great an admirer was Phi- 
lostratus of the little arts or trickery of writing, quite unworthy of a man of any 
dignity of mind. Photius says of Philostratus, " His Syntax is so very odd? 
that no writer's was ever like it, for it looked more like Solecism than any- 
thing of Syntax. Neither does he this out of ignorance ; but because some 
of the ancients might speak so now and then, he does it everywhere with 
affectation." (Phot. p. 540.) Corinthus observes it to have been a peculiar 



372 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

writers. Persuade, therefore, O Empress, Plutarch not to set 
up for a wiser man than the rest of the Greeks, by inveighing 
against the sophists, nor to fall so furiously out with Gorgias. 
But if you cannot persuade him by your wisdom and counsel, 
you know what name to give him. I know what name would 
fit him, but I forbear to mention it. 



That the writing of letters became a favourite exercise and 
fashion among the literary men and sages of Imperial Rome, 
was a natural consequence of the precepts and pattern of 
Philostratus, but especially among the sophists, who being 
very diffuse and unscrupulous in the matter of their epistles, 
made them the vehicles of a great deal of idle and worthless 
communication. They seem also to have found much amuse- 
ment in fabricating letters, which they sometimes dispersed 
as the productions of men who were far above giving birth 
to the silly trash imputed to them. Whether the letters, 
which appear in the various collections as the performances 
of the sophists themselves, under different titles and designa- 
tions, were real productions, is a question upon which any 
labour of investigation would be very unprofitably employed. 
The collections published with the credit of having Aldus and 
Cujacius respectively for their editors, after giving us the 
nugatory correspondence of Apollonius and Philostratus, ex- 
hibit a very flimsy compilation of the letters of these sophists, 
who had assumed, as has been shewn, almost universally, the 
lecturer's office, and occupied the chairs of the Pythagorean, 
stoic, and peripatetic philosophers, whose schools were be- 
coming less frequented as the taste for false ornament and 
sickly sentiment grew in favour and authority. 

way of the Attics to put nominatives instead of the oblique cases ; and he gives 
instances from Aristophanes and Philostratus. (Cor. 7repi diaXeicTuv). iElian 
and Philostratus have been thought to be the most Attic of all the tribe of so- 
phists. See Bent. Phal. on the Attic Dialect, xii. The omission of gramma- 
tical sequence or the avaicoXovOog was a sort of solecistic figure in composition, 
practised by Philostratus, and others of that class, with an absurd frequency, 
and very sparingly by the best writers. 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 373 

The letters of these teachers, thus brought under our notice, 
convey but a low opinion of the general state of literature in 
Rome under the Caesars. The energies of the mind were 
sinking fast under the burthen of its moral corruption. That 
excitement of emulation, which, in the more precarious and 
contentious state of the Roman power, brought man into 
stimulating comparison with man, and kept the springs of 
action in their full tone and tensity, being in a great measure 
withdrawn under a domination which levelled all conditions, 
and neutralized the varieties of natural and individual capa- 
city, the mind was left to the prostrating effect of a religion 
of folly, depravity, and delusion, without any counterpoise or 
re-action. Vice had the field to itself; sensuality was at no 
variance with the order of things, and virtue, in an active 
form, wore the aspect of disturbance. In such a state of 
society, if society it could be called, not enough of resource 
was left in the human mind to promote the growth, and sus- 
tain the dignity of genius, or to give to thought and ingenuity 
occasion for its exercise, or matter for its employment. So 
true it is that the patronage of literature is vested in the great 
public ; and that with them is that invisible throne on which 
opinion is seated, sending forth her arbitrations and decrees, 
to which states and communities must ultimately conform. 

That the letters either feigned or real of the latter sophists 
are among the evidences which shew that the genius of Rome 
declined with her fortunes, a perusal of such collections as 
we have of them would go far to prove. It may be as well 
to produce two or three which appear to have the most raci- 
ness in them, though they do not come in chronological order, 
nor can it be required of any reader to sacrifice an hour to 
such trifles. After detaining us some time with the ineptiae 
of Philostratus, our compilers present us with the epistles 
ethical, rustic, and amatory of Theophilact, 19 a Byzantine 
historian, who wrote the history of the Emperor Maurice, 



19 He is usually designated Qeo(pi\aicTOQ Sxo\a<ruco£ Sijuofcarra, and men- 
tioned as the author of E7riTo\ai rjOiicai aypoiKiKai /cai traipifcai. 



374 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

terminating with the massacre of that prince and his children 
by Phocas. The epistles of iElian, which wholly appertain 
to rustic matters, and are both insipid and gross. Of iEneas, 20 
the sophist ; of Procopius, also called the sophist ; by whom 
might be meant the Greek historian, of Ceesarea in Palestine. 
And of Dionysius, the sophist of Antioch. 

SOSIPATER TO AXIOCHUS: THEOPHYLACT. 

I hear you have recently committed your brother to the 
grave, and that you are inconsolable for the loss. But that a 
philosopher, as you are, can allow himself to be thus over- 

20 This would seem, according to Fabricius, (1718 and 2, c. 10) to have 
been iEneas of Gaza, a Platonic philosopher, and a Christian, who wrote 
a dialogue, called The Theophrastus, on the Immortality of the Soul, and the 
Resurrection of the Body ; and is said to have written twenty-five epistles, 
which are still extant, — the exact amount of those given us in Aldus and 
Cujacius. 

Gibbon's narrative of the wonderful attestation of the miracle of the tongues, 
by iEneas of Gaza, is a relation in itself so striking and so very characteristic 
of that historian's manner, that I cannot forbear introducing it in this place. 
** The example of fraud must excite suspicion ; and the specious miracles by 
which the African Catholics have defended the truth and justice of their cause, 
may be ascribed, with more reason, to their own industry, than to the visible 
protection of Heaven. Yet the historian who views this religious conflict with 
an impartial eye, may condescend to mention one preternatural event, which 
will edify the devout, and surprise the incredulous. Tiapsa, a maritime colony 
of Mauritania, sixteen miles to the east of Csesarea, had been distinguished in 
every age by the orthodox zeal of its inhabitants. They had braved the fury 
of the Donatists ; they resisted or eluded the tyranny of the Arians. The town 
was deserted on the approach of an heretical bishop : most of the inhabitants 
who could procure ships passed over to the coast of Spain ; and the unhappy 
remnant, refusing all communion with the usurper, still presumed to hold their 
pious, but illegal, assemblies. Their disobedience exasperated the cruelty of 
Hunneric. A military Count was dispatched from Carthage to Tiapsa : he 
collected the Catholics in the forum; and, in the presence of the whole pro- 
vince, deprived the guilty of their right hands and tongues. But the holy 
confessors continued to speak without tongues ; and this miracle is attested by 
Victor, an African bishop, who published a history of the persecution within 
two years after the event. ' If any one/ says Victor, ' should doubt of the 
truth, let him repair to Constantinople, and listen to the clear and perfect 
language of Restitutus, the sub-deacon, one of those glorious sufferers, who is 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 375 

come, I own I am surprised : for what is this formidable 
thing called death, but sleep; a little longer, perhaps, but 
brief, indeed, when compared with the futurity which follows. 
The dead are only gone upon a little journey. Not long to be 
separated from us. Bear with patience this temporary separa- 
tion, in the hope of being shortly reunited. Do not let this 
event prove you to have a soul too fond of the body. Remem- 
ber that Plotinus was ashamed of his connexion with the body. 
So much did this mortal covering offend the philosopher. For 
my sake let your grief stop here, and let prudence mitigate 
your sorrow. Be your own physician. You have your own 
medicament at hand — reason. That nepenthes that quiets 
inward pain, and induces the oblivion of all ills. 21 Reason is 

now lodged in the palace of the emperor Zeno, and is respected by the devout 
empress.' " 

At Constantinople we are astonished to find a cool, learned, and unexcep- 
tionable witness, without interest, and without passion. JEneas of Gaza, a 
Platonic philosopher, has accurately described his own observations on these 
African sufferers. "I saw them myself; I heard them speak; I diligently 
enquired by what means such an articulate voice could be formed without any 
organ of speech ; I used my eyes to examine the report of my ears ; I opened 
their mouth, and saw that the tongue had been completely torn away by the 
roots ; an operation which the physicians generally suppose to be mortal. The 
testimony of iEneas of Gaza might be confirmed by the superfluous evidence 
of the emperor Justinian, in a perpetual edict ; of Count Marcellinus, in his 
chronicle of the times ; and of Pope Gregory the First, who had resided at 
Constantinople, as the minister of the Roman Pontiff. They all lived within 
the compass of a century ; and they all appeal to their personal knowledge, 
or the public notoriety, for the truth of a miracle, which was repeated in several 
instances, displayed on the greatest theatre of the world, and submitted, 
during a series of years, to the calm examination of the senses. This super- 
natural gift of the African confessors, who spoke without tongues, will com- 
mand the assent of those, and of those only, who already believe that their 
language was pure and orthodox. But the stubborn mind of an infidel is 
guarded by secret, incurable suspicion ; and the Arian or Socinian, who has 
seriously rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, will not be shaken by the most 
plausible evidence of an Athanasian miracle. 

21 This is a verse taken from the Odyssey, L. iv. 221, which is this : 
~Nri7rav0sg r a%o\ovTe kclkojv e7ri\rj9ov airavTiov. 
When Telemachus and Pisistratus were entertained at Sparta, by Menelaus, 
Helen mixed a certain drug, which had been given her by the wife of Thone, 



376 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

too skilful in the application of its remedies to deteriorate the 
case of the patient. Let us leave these mortal fears to agitate 
those who look only to mortal things. In this world that 
royal part of us, the soul, is full of the foulest stains. For 
my part I cannot help thinking that our birth rather than our 
death is to be deplored. The one is the beginning of tears, 
the other is the delivery from sorrow. It is our ignorance 
that makes us so poor and spiritless. We are frightened at 
death, not because we know it to be an evil, but because we 
know not what it is. Take care you do not incur the fate of 
Niobe, and turn your human nature into stone. 

AR1STON TO NICEAS I THEOPHYLACT. 

They say an elephant is an animal very fond of learning, and 
no unapt scholar in the study of human wisdom. Nor is the 
vastness of his frame and structure so much to be admired as 
his docile capacity. And of this the Indian servants who at- 
tend upon them have spread abroad many stories. I cannot 
but wonder at Nicias, who can be content to be inferior to brute 
animals. You, the son of a sophist, have wasted your patri- 
mony in dancing and dice, and your time in idle games ; and 
thus you have been acting in a way to make an end of the 
nobility of your race. If you are desirous of being recognised 
as the offspring of Hermagoras, turn to the example he has 
left you, and though you may be rather late in this amendment, 
yet it is never too late to reform, even in old age, as was 
Plato's opinion. If your bad habits are so inveterate that you 
cannot bear to abandon them, and still call yourself the son 
of Hermagoras, know that you rob the sepulchre of your father 
of its honours; by your iniquity you insult his virtues. 

who reigned at Thebes, in iEgypt, where this intoxicating herb grew, possess- 
ing the power of charming the mind into a perfect oblivion of all cares and 
griefs. Some have supposed an allegorical allusion to be couched under this 
story, implying the soothing efficacy of a conversation replete with narratives 
and interesting observations, while others take the passage literally, and sup- 
pose opium, or some narcotic drug to have been mixed in the wine. See the 
note of Ernesti. 



TO THE TIME OF PH1LOSTRATUS. 377 



GORGIAS TO AKISTIDES : THEOPHYLACT. 

You are ready enough to borrow money, but think it very hard 
to be called upon for payment. And when you meet a credi- 
tor, you are as frightened as if you encountered some terrible 
wild beast : you look around for some place where three ways 
meet : you cast about your eyes for some gate way, that you 
may escape from your pursuers; just as those who are in 
storms at sea are eager to attain some harbour. But while 
you go on thus, you are only adding evil to evil. If you pay 
to some, you continue borrowing from others ; acting like 
those who from the fear of death throw themselves from a 
precipice. Only consider the misery of being in debt. It is 
a case of multiplied evil ; exceeding the fabled hydra in its 
automatous excrescences. I would have you to live in such 
horror of debt, as to dread it even in your dreams. When 
this shall be your case you will see the bright sun with a 
cheerful mind ; and breathe the air of heaven, while walking 
on this earth, with joy and gladness. 

ERATOSTHENES TO JESCHINES : THEOPHYLACT. 

You swallow oaths like the herbs of the garden ; but the per- 
formance of what you have sworn to is so hard, that it breaks 
your teeth. You deny every charge, most infamous of men. 
When your tongue swears, your mind consents not to the oath. 
You know not that your unbridled tongue shall in the end 
make your punishment the heavier. We must expiate in 
actual suffering the sins of speech. Therefore, keep your 
tongue in subjection; and be afraid of an oath even for the 
confirmation of truth. An oath may seem to you a light 
thing, but it is the heaviest of all burthens. It was for this 
that Tantalus was so sorely punished : for he did not restrain 
his tongue even in divine things. 



378 FROM THE TIME OF FLINY 



DIOGENES TO SOSION .* THEOPHYLACT. 

This vile and abject thing which we call glory, is looked upon 
by wise men as a delusive dream. More contemptible than 
the figments of fables : inconstant, versatile, the mockery of 
sound, more evanescent than a breath. While it withholds 
itself, it is the cause of vexation ; when it comes, it brings 
with it additional sorrow. As Boon as it is obtained it proves 
ungrateful to its lovers. Before it hath come into being, it 
hath come to nothing. 22 Then let not the gusts of fortune over- 
power your reason. She sports with us as she pleases. And 
under her rule, the things of this life are the shades of shadows. 

CROMYLION TO AMPELON : THEOPHYLACT. 

Nothing in nature is more wretched than the condition of 
the husbandman. Even the winds exercise a tyranny over 
us. A blast from the east ruins us at once. It has destroyed 
my crops, my vines, and my clusters. And the worst of it is, 
I cannot bring to trial the author of these injuries. I am de- 
termined, therefore, to lay aside my sickle, and my spade, and 
to take up the shield, the helmet, and the sword. I will be- 
come a soldier, and changing my occupation, will teach wis- 
dom to chance. 

CALLIPIDES TO ANEMON : .ELIAN. 

Though there are many things very desirable in a country 
life, nothing more distinguishes and adorns it than soft and 
agreeable manners. To cultivate one's land in quiet, is the 
happy method of procuring inward tranquillity. But how it 
is I. don't know, but you are to me a rude and unkind neigh- 
bour. You drive me from your meadows, and your orchards. 
If you see a man approaching, you raise a cry as if you were 

22 kcii ttoiv yevecOai rrpog to /at) eivai jxeTedpafiE. 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 379 

driving off a wolf; so difficult are you of access. And this is 
what I call bad neighbourhood. If the farm I occupy were 
not my patrimony, I would cheerfully part with it to avoid so 
bad a neighbour. But I beseech you, lay aside that savage 
disposition and behaviour. Let not your irritable temper make 
you forget what becomes you ; lest, at last, you lose your rea- 
son, and forget yourself. 

TO PAMPUS THE GRAMMARIAN : iENEAS. 

My sorrow for the robbery you have suffered has cast a gloom 
over my letter; for your loss troubles me just as much as if it 
had been my own. Nor is it strange it should ; for if friends 
may be said to hold all their possessions in common, the rob- 
bery of one is the robbery of all. But on the other hand, 
when I recollect myself, why should I grieve for this event ; he 
that is above caring for gain, should also be above grieving for 
loss. This should be our consolation. Am I right in this 
sentiment. Let me know your opinion. 

TO EUCRATIUS .* .ENEAS. 

Yesterday he who was a teacher of youth, is to day led 
about by a youth. He now comes forth in a miserable plight, 
who was but the other day an object of respect and obedience. 
Such are the casualties of life. But why commiserate and 
not relieve. If misfortune were suddenly to deprive a soldier 
of his right hand, with which he had valiantly fought, would 
you not think he ought to partake of the spoils of victory. 
Shall we, therefore, then, who derive our support from our in- 
structions in rhetoric, be inferior to those who follow the pro- 
fession of arms, in the virtue of friendship. « 

TO EPIPHANIUS THE SOPHIST I JENEAS. 

The person to whom I have given this letter in charge, hath 
furnished excellent precepts for teaching both how to live and 
how to write, as becomes a man of elegance and scholarship. 



380 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 

He is well qualified to take the care and superintendence of a 
family of distinction. But he is influenced more by the love 
of his country than by the desire of gain. Having visited 
and inspected many cities, like another Ulysses, he has now 
turned his steps towards you as to Alcinous : and to you he 
will relate his journeys, as Ulysses did to him. But I trust 
you will put a period to his wanderings by taking him home- 
wards. Nor let his expectation of finding an asylum with 
you, through my means, be disappointed. 

TO JOANNES : PROCOP. 22 

If there was a court to try men for the crime of neglecting 
their friends, and I were to be summoned before it, and the 
charge brought against me was that I had treated my friend 
as not worth my notice, I think I could not better defend my- 
self than by calling you as my witness, who have unaccount- 
ably presented yourself as my accuser; for it did really surprise 
me to find that a matter of no moment had made you my ad- 
versary. Full well do I know that those who are not friends 
are often very good correspondents, while those who are true 
friends are obliged to remain long silent, satisfied with the 
vivid impression of their absent friends on their memories, 
being occupied and distracted with a multiplicity of business. 
The mere writing or omission to write is no criterion of friend- 
ship, which must be shewn in the mind and sentiment. 
Therefore consider the question independently of these tests. 
Whether I retain in my bosom a remembrance which nothing 
can obliterate, or celebrate your admirable qualities in words, 
recording you by name, that name which always sounds so 
pleasantly to my ears ; so long as you entertain a due regard 
to the sincerity of my feelings, you will give to me, though 
silent, more of your affection, than to any other, though his 



22 Procopius was also a sophist, of Gaza, and contemporary with iEneas. 
Sixty epistles, attributed to him, remain. Photius makes very honourable 
mention of him. See Fabric Bibl. 1718 and 2, c. 10. 



TO THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 381 

professions should be so loud as to raise the echo of the tem- 
ple of Dodona. But lest you should make use of the same 
excuse to be silent, I must invoke you to sing out, or I shall 
change my ground and contradict all I have been saying. 

TO DIODORUS : PROCOP. 

When I read your letters, our former happiness together was 
revived in my memory. That Nile, and the pleasing vision I 
once had of your person on its borders, recurred to my thoughts. 
I could not help shedding tears when I mused on the fickle- 
ness of fortune, sometimes elevating, and sometimes depres- 
sing us ; sometimes bringing friends together in a way none 
could have expected, and again separating those whom it 
had brought together beyond expectation. How wise is the 
remedy which has been found for all this, in the intercourse 
by letters, which reanimates the affections, and in a manner 
brings one's friend into one's presence in the characters formed 
by his hand. 

TO ORION : PROCOP. 

In absence, the fidelity of a friend is most satisfactorily 
proved. The professions made to one in his presence are 
equivocal. This is sometimes done as an actor on the stage 
assumes and personates another ; but if a friend maintains his 
zeal and attachment when at a distance, he proves himself to 
be one who knows how to keep, and maintain the sacred laws 
of friendship. Now this is the character in which you present 
yourself, far surpassing what has gone before by your subse- 
quent conduct. If children usually reflect the image of their 
fathers, my fame is exalted in the merits of my son ; who, by 
his virtuous and prudent behaviour, has brought his parent 
from small pretensions to great honour, and has caused him 
to be spoken of with respect in all cities and places. Continue 
to follow out that virtue of which the foundation was laid with 
me in lectures and discourses. And prove yourself to have 
studied the laws with the same diligence and success. 



382 FROM THE TIME OF PLINY 



TO MUS^US : PROCOP. 

The most learned Palladius has brought your letter to me — 
all gold. And .truly, had he brought to me the wealth of 
Croesus, I should not have looked upon him with greater com- 
placency. Some place their glory in one thing, and some in 
another — the Lydian in gold ; the Laced onian in his spear ; 
Arion in the chords and pulsations of his lyre. My boast and 
glory is in these letters ; and whatever else I am permitted to 
enjoy from the reports brought to me of yourself. I owe, 
therefore, to the young man for bringing these letters, a debt, 
which I am ashamed not to discharge. The price he is en- 
titled to is not payable in gold, nor in the gems of India : in 
these I do not abound ; nor was it for things of this sort 
that these letters and reports were brought me. I cannot 
thank him with an elegant speech, for I am not possessed 
of such endowments. Neither can I express myself with 
attic grace and ornament. In these things the children of the 
great and prosperous make their boast. If then you desire to 
hear what gift or reward I am intending to bestow, I answer — 
benevolence and heartfelt gratitude. Of these I am master, 
as said Demosthenes. Presents of another kind I leave to 
fortune and the muses to bestow at their pleasure. 



I have thus selected a few of these Greek epistles, which 
are the vagrant progeny of some of the latter sophists ; scat- 
tered among different collections, without home or parentage. 
Some few, beside those above extracted, may claim a little 
notice and respect, but the far greater number are worthy 
only of the limbo in which they lie immured, unvisited, and 
half forgotten. 



383 



CHAPTER XVII. 

LETTER WRITING FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 
TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 

Some specimens of imperial correspondence which have an 
air of genuineness, intervening between the time of Philos- 
tratus and the dynasty of Constantine have been interwoven 
in the history of that interval. The correspondence of the 
excellent Misithius with his son-in-law the third Gordian, 
seems to light up with a momentary flash the gloom that then 
invested the moral world. v-That youthful and amiable prince 
had been under the dominion of his mother and a rabble of 
eunuchs who had filled all the offices of the court, and occupied 
all the avenues to royal favour, closing the ears of the monarch 
against all honest and profitable counsel. His marriage with 
the daughter made him the friend of Misithius, a man of 
great worth and wisdom, whom he raised to the prsetorian 
prefecture, and adopted as his parent and the guide of his 
inexperience. The letter of Misithius runs thus : 

TO HIS LORD, SON, AND EMPEROR, MISITHIUS HIS 
FATHER-IN-LAW AND PREFECT. 

It is a delight to me*to think that we have gotten rid of the 
great stain and disgrace of these times, those wretched eunuchs, 
who have so long had all things at their disposal, and have 
made merchandise of every thing, under the guise of friends to 
you, to whom in truth they have been the bitterest enemies. 
And it must be the more pleasant to you to reflect upon this 
wholesome reform, as you yourself have had no share in the 
vices which it has corrected, my worthy and greatly to be res- 
pected son. That military appointments have been corruptly 

b b 7 



384 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

bestowed by these persons on those who have been incapable 
of exercising them ; that meritorious services have been 
defrauded of their rewards; that capital punishments and 
acquittals have followed the dictates of lust and avarice ; that 
the treasury has been exhausted by those who have taken 
credit to themselves for the discovery of conspiracies at the 
moment of their commencement, while these worst of men 
have been preparing plots against the good, and spreading 
idle and false reports to bring the worthy under odium and 
suspicion ; have been so many deeds of darkness with which 
you have had no participation or privity. How thankful then 
ought we to be to Providence that you have so zealously 
entered into the reformation of all these abuses. I am truly 
happy in the reflection that I am the father-in-law of a good 
prince ; — of one who lets nothing of importance go unexamined ; 
and has determined to expel from his counsels the men who 
have hitherto made a traffic of his imperial authority. 

THE EMPEROR GORDIAN TO MISITHIUS HIS FATHER 
AND HIS PREFECT. 

Unless the Omnipotence of heaven had protected the Roman 
empire, we should have by this time been put up at auc- 
tion, and our authority made a market of by a rabble of hired 
eunuchs. At length I am brought perfectly to understand 
that the man who has been put at the head of the praetorian 
schools was unfit for the station ; and that the fourth legion 
ought never to have been entrusted to the person to whom its 
command has been given ; and, not to go into particulars, 
that abuses have been numerous in all departments of the 
state. But I thank heaven that by your suggestions, who are 
yourself above all such practices, I have been made fully 
sensible of what has been going on while I was kept from 
this knowledge by my seclusion within the palace. What 
good could I be capable of while obliged to follow the dictates 
of a chief of the eunuchs, who, calling to his counsels three 
others of a like stamp, constrained me to adopt all their 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 385 

recommendations. My dear father, I wish to disclose to you 
without reserve the real truth. Miserable is that emperor 
whose situation is such as to require concealment, who as he 
cannot himself go among his subjects to acquire a knowledge 
of what is doing, by his own personal observation, ought, at 
least, to have the opportunity of ascertaining the state of facts 
from the concurrent testimony of others. 



The third Gordian was accompanied by the Prefect Misi- 
thius, in his Persian campaign ; and his letter to the senate 
is greatly distinguished among dispatches of this kind for the 
modesty with which he assigns to his friend and counsellor 
the merit of his successes. It is to the following effect in the 
Augustan historian, Julius Capitolinus. 

" I will in the next place, Conscript Fathers, in a few words 
condense the many things which have been done in our vic- 
torious progress, worthy, each of them, of a triumph ; we have 
delivered the whole of Antiochia from the Persian yoke, the 
tyranny of their kings, and their laws. Carrae and other 
neighbouring cities have been reduced under the Roman sway. 
We have carried our victorious arms as far as Nisibis ; and, 
with the favour of heaven, we hope to proceed to Ctesiphon. So 
much we owe to Misithius, our prefect and father, under whose 
conduct and direction we have hitherto acted, and shall con- 
tinue to act. It is your part to decree the proper supplications 
to commend us to the divine protection, and to render the 
public thanks due to Misithius." 



As a contrast to the letters of the younger Gordian may be 
read that of the emperor Gallienus, the son of Valerian, which 
is one of the most striking epistolary samples of revengeful 
malevolence luxuriating in the pride of the purple. It is 
written to Celer Verrianus, his general, after the victory 
obtained over Ingenuus, his competitor, one of those whom 
Trebellius Pollio reckons among the thirty tyrants, under 

c c 



386 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

whose brief and nominal sway, the Roman world, or parts of 
it, successively passed. 

GALLIENUS TO VERRIANUS. 

Yo u will fail in satisfying me, if you content yourself with 
putting to death only those who are found in arms, whom the 
chance of battle might have disposed of. I would have all 
the males sacrificed, without any exception, if the slaughter of 
old men and boys would not subject my name to too much re- 
proach. Let every one who is suspected of ill will towards me 
be put to death ; and to the same fate let all be devoted who 
open their mouths against me, against me the son of Valerian, 
against me the father and brother of so many princes. Have 
I lived to see In genu us declared emperor. Tear, slay, cut to 
pieces. You may understand the extent of my indignation by 
my having written these things with my own hand. 



The epistolary testimonies of Decius and Valerian to the 
virtues of Claudius, who afterwards attained the summit of 
power, are good specimens of princely regard to merit. It is 
thus that Decius writes to Messala the governor of Achaia. 

" We have ordered Claudius the tribune, a youth of the 
fairest promise, a most gallant soldier, a most upright citizen, 
and necessary alike to the camp, to the senate, and to the 
republic, to repair to Thermopylse, for the protection of the 
Peloponnesus, being well persuaded that I can look to no one 
with equal confidence for the faithful and effectual discharge 
of whatever high duties are assigned to him. I desire you to 
furnish him with two hundred soldiers from our province of 
Dardania, let him have two hundred and sixty horsemen, 
whereof let one hundred be cased in complete armour, to 
which let there be added sixty Cretan archers ; and a thousand 
of the new levies well armed. I assign him this last-named 
force, because I know him to be one to whom a raw soldiery 
may be trusted ; for than Claudius there does not live a man 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 387 

more devoted to his country, or more qualified to promote its 
glory by his bravery and discretion." 

The letter of Valerian, which is written to Ablavius Muraena, 
the prsetorian Prefect, runs in the following terms. 



VALERIAN AUG. TO A. MURJENA PREF. 

Complain no more that Claudius is still only tribune, and is 
not already in command of the army. Nor tell me any longer 
of the complaints of the senate and people to the same effect. 
Claudius is in command — in command of all Illyricum. To 
him is confided the Thracian, Mesian, Dalmatian, Pannonian, 
and Dacian armies. This great man has the consulship open 
to his ambition, and when he is disposed for it, the praetorian 
prsefecture is within his attainment. We wish you to under- 
stand that we have assigned to him the same salary as that 
of the iEgyptian prefect ; robes of office the same in splendour 
and number as those belonging to the African proconsulate ; 
silver-plate equal to that of Melatius the procurator of Illyri- 
cum ; and as large an attendance as we allow ourselves in the 
several cities ; that all may understand in what esteem I hold 
so excellent a person. 



A letter of the emperor Valerian to Anton ius Gallus the 
consul exhibits his opinion of the severe qualities of Aure- 
lian, who afterwards ruled the empire with such sanguinary 
success and military renown. 

" You blame me in your familiar letters for committing the 
care of my son to Posthumius rather than to Aurelian, in 
deviation from the usual practice of selecting a person of strict 
manners for the management of our children, as well as for the 
command of our armies. This may be true, but you would 
change your opinion as to the course I have taken, if you 
knew to what an extreme Aurelian carries his notions of dis- 
cipline. He is too exact and severe for the tone and temper 
of the times in which he lives. I must in all sincerity con- 



388 FROM THE TIME OF PH1LOSTRATUS 

fess, that I am afraid of his carrying himself with more than 
necessary rigour towards a youth, perhaps a little too much 
given to the levity of behaviour natural to his years." 

Another epistle of the same emperor is produced by Vopiscus 
from the archives or repertory of the Urban prefecture, in 
which we see at once the high estimation in which Aurelian 
was held, and the correct principles by which the mind of 
Valerian was governed in his dispensation of rewards. The 
letter is to Ceionius Albinus, the prefect of the city. 

" We should, indeed, be very willing to make a much larger 
allowance than that which is assigned to their rank and 
station when we are remunerating the services of men of 
distinguished merit, whose conduct would justify the most 
profuse rewards. But the strictness with which public 
affairs should be administered requires that no one should 
receive more out of the funds raised in the province in which 
he holds his command, than the salary annexed to his official 
rank. We have appointed Aurelian, a man of consummate 
bravery, the inspector and distributor of all our camps and 
military stations ; who, by the confession of the whole army, 
has deserved so well of us, and the whole republic, that hardly 
any rewards can exceed, or even equal his merits. In what part 
of his character is he not illustrious ? where is he inferior to 
the Corvinus's and the Scipio's. The deliverer of Illyricum, 
the restorer of Gaul, the model of a complete commander. 
And yet for all this I dare not add to his rewards anything 
beyond what the sober maxims of a well regulated republic 
can allow." 

The military epistle of Aurelian himself to one of his officers 
is in the style of an experienced commander, and an inflexible 
disciplinarian ; but it more especially indicates the stern cha- 
racter of this emperor. 

" If you desire to remain tribune, nay, if you desire to 
remain a living man, keep the troops in strict subjection. 
Let no one touch what is not his own, not a poulet, or a 
sheep, or a grape, or an ear of corn. Let no one exact any oil, 
salt, or wood ; but let every one be content with his allowance 
of provision. Let the source from which he draws subsistence 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 389 

be the spoils of victory, and not the tears of the provincialists. 
His arms must be kept clean and dry ; his weapons well 
sharpened ; his sandals firm ; his vestments properly changed; 
let his pay be in his belt, not in the tavern ; let his collar, 
bracelet, and ring be on in due order; let him rub well down 
his sumpter-horse ; let him beware of selling his animal's pro- 
vender ; let each charge himself with the care of the baggage 
mule of the division ; let medical attendance be gratuitous ; let 
no money be squandered on pretenders to divination; let all 
demean themselves modestly and quietly in their quarters; and 
let the promoters of disturbance be corporally punished." 

The epistle of Aurelian to the senate concerning the inspec- 
tion of the Sibylline oracles is rather a curious specimen. 

" I cannot but feel surprised, Venerable Fathers, that you 
have hesitated so long to open the Sibylline books, just as if 
you were in a Christian church, instead of the temple of all 
the gods. Proceed in your work without further hesitation. 
Encourage the pure ceremonies of the priests ; assist your 
prince labouring for the public good. Let the books be forth- 
with inspected ; and let all attendant ceremonies be duly per- 
formed. I for my own part devote without reserve, money, 
captives, royal animals, and whatever the success of battles 
has put in my power to the use and exigence of this solemn 
occasion ; for I deem it honourable to conquer with the gods 
on our side. It was with such that our ancestors entered 
upon and ended their glorious wars. I have sent to the pre- 
fect of the treasury authority to furnish the necessary supplies. 
The public chest, which I perceive to be at this juncture 
replete with treasure, I place at your discretion." 

The letters of Aurelian as given us by Vopiscus are very 
characteristic, and bear strong marks of genuineness. The 
following account brings the man and his style of letter- 
writing before us in strong relief. When, after a triumphant 
series of exploits he came with his small but veteran force 
before Tyana, the native place of the celebrated Apollonius 
Tyaneus, he was much incensed at finding it shut against 
him, and was provoked to exclaim, " I will not leave a living 
dog in this town/' The city was taken, and a man named 



390 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

Heraclammon, who had made a treacherous proposal to Aure- 
lian to shew him a pass through which his troops might enter 
the place, was among the captives. Upon this occasion the 
emperor made an imposing display of his severity and his 
lenity. The traitor was put to death by order ; but when the 
soldiers, eager for spoil, called upon him to put his threat of 
destroying the city into execution, reminding him of his 
declaration, that not a dog was to be left alive in it, " it is 
true," replied the emperor ; " I did say I would not leave a 
dog alive in Tyana ; kill, therefore, all the dogs you find in 
it." This, says the historian, was a grand speech, and the 
suffrage of the soldiers more than responded to it. They 
declared their entire agreement with the resolution of their 
general, by which they thought themselves more enriched 
than they would have been by the plunder of the city. The 
epistle of the imperial general is remarkable. It is addressed 
to Mallius Chilo in the following terms : 

" I have given up Heraclammon, to whose treachery I owe 
the capture of Tyana, to merited execution. I could not 
give my countenance to a traitor ; I have, therefore, allowed 
him to be killed by the soldiers, as I reasoned that one who 
had no regard to his country, could never keep his faith with 
me. He is the only one of all the citizens of Tyana whose 
life has been taken from him. The man was certainly rich ; 
but that none might suppose that to get possession of his 
riches influenced my determination, I restored his property to 
his children." 

The city, according to the historian, was taken in a manner 
worthy of admiration. Aurelian entered singly by a way 
shewn to him by Heraclammon through the rampart, and 
holding before him his purple tunic, while his person was 
visible to his soldiers, that were still without, the citizens 
surrendered, supposing the whole force of the emperor to 
be within their walls. It is reported, says the historian, 
that Aurelian had meditated the destruction of the city of 
Tyana, but that he was deterred from the execution of his 
design by Apollonius Tyaneus himself, the friend of the 
gods, and himself adored as a divinity in this place, who 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 391 

suddenly stood before the emperor, and thus addressed him : 
" Aurelian, if you wish to conquer, think no more of destroy- 
ing this city. Aurelian, if you wish to reign, abstain from 
the blood of the innocent. Aurelian, if you wish to live, 
practise clemency." The form of the venerable philosopher 
was recognised by Aurelian from its conformity to the image 
in many temples; and full of astonishment and awe, he 
immediately promised an ample dedication of divine honours, 
and a merciful treatment of the conquered city. 1 

The letter of Aurelian to Zenobia is written with the stern 
brevity of an habitual conqueror. 

AURELIAN, EMPEROR OF THE ROMAN WORLD, AND RE- 

COVERER OF THE EAST, TO ZENOBIA, AND THOSE 

WHO ARE IN WARLIKE 'LEAGUE WITH HER. 

You would have acted better for yourselves if you had done 
that of your own accord which you are now commanded to 
do. I command you to surrender upon the terms I propose, 
which are these — your life shall be spared, so that you spend 
that life with your friends, where I shall, with the advice 
of the august Senate of Rome, think fit to place you. Your 
jewels, silver, gold, and precious things, you must give up 
to the Roman treasury. The Palmyrenes shall have their 
liberty and laws. 

Zenobia's answer was as follows : — 

ZENOBIA, QUEEN OF THE EAST, TO AURELIAN AUGUSTUS. 

No one ever yet demanded what you demand by letter. It is 
not by the pen, but by the sword that the business of war is 



1 Vopiscus is determined to believe every foolish relation of the miracles 
of Apollonius Tyaneus. He concludes his account of the particulars above 
stated with the following remarks : " These things I have learned from the 
credible information of grave men, and have often read them in the Ulpian 
library, (formed by Trajan, and removed by Dioclesian to his baths to give 
them celebrity,) and have fully credited, as being in correspondence with the 
greatness of the man. For what among men has ever appeared more vener- 



392 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

to be transacted. You demand my surrender ; as if you could 
be ignorant that my ancestor, the royal Cleopatra, chose death 
rather than splendid slavery. We are not without the assist- 
ance of the Persians, and are now expecting them. The 
Saracens are for us, the Armenians are for us. And remem- 
ber, Aurelian, that the Syrian robbers routed your army. 
What then are you to expect, if the forces we are looking for 
should come to our assistance. You will probably then lay 
aside this haughtiness with which you now command me to 
surrender ; as if the universe were at your feet." 

The above Epistle of Zenobia is said to have been trans- 
lated from the Syrian into the Greek language ; the Emperor's 
having been written in Greek. And for having advised the 
letter of Zenobia, Longinus was put to death 2 by Aurelian, 
when the city, together with its Queen, fell into his hands. 
The soldiers called loudly for the execution of the Queen, but 
the Emperor thought it more for his glory to reserve her for 
his triumph. The cruel disposition of the victor after these 
successes was exercised with little restraint; and upon the 
revolt of the Palmyrenes, which took place shortly after the 
first conquest, a second victory was obtained, which was dis- 
tinguished by the most savage marks of his vengeance, as 
appears by his Epistle written in characters of blood, to C. 
Bassus. 



able and sacred. He has restored the dead to life; and if any one desires to 
know more of his super-human acts and sayings, he may find them in his 
life written in Greek." The account is given in Philostratus, who, however, 
does not say that the girl so carried out for dead was certainly dead ; but 
makes it a doubtful point whether he did not find a spark of life in her which 
had not been perceived by the attendants. Eire (nnvGrjpa rr\c, ^vxnQ tvpsv 
ev avrr], 6 eXsXrjOsi 9epa7revovrag. 

2 The praise bestowed on Dionysius Cassius Longinus by Porphyry, in 
his life of Plotinus, has placed him at the head of all the scholars and rhe- 
toricians of his time. Few particulars of his life have been transmitted to us. 
He tells us in one of the fragments which have been preserved, that he travelled 
much in his youth, and derived the most important help to his studies from 
his familiar intercourse with the scholars and philosophers of his time. The 
place of his birth has been much in dispute; but the most probable opinion 
has fixed it at Athens, where his maternal uncle, Cornelius Frouto, was in 
great reputation as a teacher of eloquence. His uncle died and made him 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 393 

AURELIAN AUG. TO CEIONIUS BASSUS. 

The swords of the soldiers have done their work, and ought 
now to be stayed. The Palmyrenes have been slaughtered 
enough. We have spared neither women, nor children, nor old 
men, nor the rustics of the field ; all have been promiscuously 
slain. To whom now shall we deliver the city or the territory 
round it ? Such as have been left alive, may now be spared. 
The destruction of so great a number have given a lesson 
to the few, by which they are sufficiently corrected. My 
desire is, that the temple of the sun, which the standard- 
bearers and trumpeters have plundered, be restored to its 
former state. You have three hundred pounds of gold from 
the coffers of Zenobia, you have also one thousand eight hun- 
dred pounds of silver, and you have the royal jewels. With 
these means you may set up the temple in its ancient lustre ; 
and in so doing, you will do an act well pleasing to me, and to 
the immortal gods. I will write to the Senate requesting a 
priest to be sent who may dedicate the temple. 



Valerian was one of the best and wisest of the Roman 
Emperors, and was particularly distinguished by his discern- 
ment in the discovery of worth in others. His was the un- 
happy lot of many fathers ; to see their well directed efforts 
to promote the general ascendency of virtue contravened and 
baffled by the pernicious examples of their children. It is 

his heir ; after which even the commenced his travels, from which at a mature 
age, full of experience, and the fruits of his studies and learned communica- 
tions, he returned to Athens, and published his admirable commentary on the 
sublime in composition. At the invitation of Queen Zenobia, he repaired to 
her court as the instructor of her children, but was soon adopted by her as her 
counsellor and friend ; and it was in this capacity that he appears to have en- 
couraged her to assert and maintain her authority and independence against 
Aurelian. His end appears to have been characterised by the philosophy and 
constancy which had accompanied him through his life. The last words used 
by him to his sorrowing friends, by way of consolation, are said to have been 
to this effect, " As the whole earth ought to be considered by us as only a 
sort of spacious prison, he surely is the happiest man who is the soonest 
restored to liberty." 



394 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

thus he writes to Probus, who afterwards emulated his virtues 
in the purple, in conferring upon him the command of the 
third legion. 

" My very dear Probus, when the merit of your actions is 
duly considered, I seem to be late in promoting you to the 
high command now offered to you, and yet it must be con- 
fessed that your promotion is rapid. Receive into your alle- 
giance the third, which is called the prosperous legion, which 
I have never yet committed in trust to any but a mature and 
able officer ; and which was not confided to myself till my 
head was hoary, and then it was considered as a subject of 
gratulation. But I do not wait for the maturity of years in 
you, who in manners and attainments have already acquired 
all that age and experience could impart. I have ordered for 
you a treble allowance of military clothing, and a double 
stipend ; and I have also assigned you a veteran standard- 
bearer to attend upon you." 

The letter of Probus to Narses, King of Persia, is in the 
old Roman and republican humour, and to the full as laconic 
as any of those ascribed to Brutus. It is thus he rejects the 
proffered presents of the great king. 

" Considering that all you possess must soon be ours, I can- 
not but wonder that of that all you send so little. Enjoy in 
the interim what you possess ; which when we are pleased to 
make our own we know how to do it." 

The epistle of Julius Calphurnius, the keeper of the records 
of public transactions, which is next exhibited, is introduced 
in the pages of Vopiscus by the following narrative. 

Carus, the successor of Probus, having with a great mili- 
tary force, for the whole of which he was indebted to the re- 
sources and ability of the great Emperor who had preceded 
him, nearly decided the Sarmatian war, proceeded, without 
encountering an enemy capable of opposing him, against the 
Persians ; captured the whole of Mesopotamia, and extended 
his victories even to the walls of Ctesiphon. His success was 
so rapid, owing in a great measure to the domestic distrac- 
tions of Persia, that he was honoured with the title of 
Imperator Persicus ; but when urged onwards by his ambi- 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 395 

tion, and the reproaches of his prefect, he would fain have 
proceeded further, he was taken off, as some say, by disease, 
but as more assert, by lightning. Certain it is, that just 
about the time of his dissolution, such a storm of the elements 
took place, that some were said to have died from the effects 
of the terror it produced, The Emperor was lying in his 
tent, and suffering from sickness when the tempest took place, 
and his death was probably hastened by it. The Epistle 
above-mentioned to the prefect of the city was as follows. 
" When Carus our prince, dear to us as his name imports, was 
sick, a furious tempest arose, accompanied with such darkness 
as to render all objects invisible. Its corruscations were so 
vivid as to look like the incessant vibrations of a fiery meteor. 
The confusion was so great that all cognisance of passing- 
events was obliterated, and the panic was universal. In addi- 
tion to these horrors, the prince's chamberlains, in their des- 
perate sorrow for the loss of their prince, set fire to the imperial 
pavilion ; whence arose the rumour of his having been struck 
dead by the lightning, whereas from all we can gather on the 
subject, his death was the consequence of the disease under 
which he was at that time labouring. 5 ' The biographer adds, 
* I have inserted this Epistle, because it has generally been 
considered that there was a certain decree of fate, that no 
Roman prince should ever be able to pass beyond Ctesiphon, 
and that Carus was consumed by lightning, that he might 
not attempt to transgress the boundary which fate had pre- 
scribed to Roman enterprize." 



About the period of the Emperor Julian, elaborate letter- 
writing much employed the pens of learned men, and the 
talent was held in high esteem, when the sophist and orator 
Libanius distinguished himself in this province of literature. 
Eunapius, in his lives of the philosophers, thus speaks of 
Libanius : " In his epistles, and such like familiar composi- 
tions, he affected the ancient form of phraseology. His 
writings are full of ornament, and a certain attractiveness 
arising out of the peculiarities of his diction pervades his 



39G FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

works. They have a dramatic air. In Attica his style was 
considered as very sensible and spirited. He had the relish 
of the old comedy, which, mixed with his own manner, often 
delighted the ear. The reader will find in his orations con- 
siderable learning and knowledge. But he was fond of a 
strange and antique style — a recondite language borrowed 
from the old time, which he furbished up, giving to things, 
old and trite, an original air. The Emperor Julian could not 
help admiring it; and all were surprised by the graceful turns 
of his elocution. Many of his works are of a nature and 
quality not to be understood and appreciated without some 
pains and ingenuity : on the whole, however, his orations must 
be confessed to be in general cold and barren of interest." In 
the opinion of Gibbon, the writings of Libanius were the vain 
and idle compositions of an orator who cultivated the science 
of words, — the productions of a recluse student, whose mind, 
regardless of his contemporaries, was incessantly fixed on the 
Trojan war, and the Athenian commonwealth. Yet, says the 
same historian, the sophist sometimes descended from this 
imaginary elevation. He entertained a various and elaborate 
correspondence. He praised the virtues of his own times. He 
boldly arraigned the abuses of public and private life ; and 
he eloquently pleaded the cause of Antioch against the just 
resentment of Julian and Theodosius. Libanius experienced 
the peculiar misfortune of surviving the religion and sciences 
to which he had consecrated his genius. The friend of Julian 
was an indignant spectator of the triumph of Christianity ; 
and his bigotry, which darkened the prospect of the visible 
world, did not inspire Libanius with any lively hopes of 
celestial glory and happiness. Near two thousand of his 
letters are still extant, of which Dr. Bentley might justly, 
though quaintly observe : " You feel the emptiness and dead- 
ness of them, and that you are conversing with some dreaming 
pedant with his elbow on his desk/' 3 

The Emperor Julian, who from 360 to 363 a.d. ruled the 

3 Dissertation on Phal. Vol. II. p. 84. Ed. 1836. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 397 

Roman world, was deservedly distinguished as an ingenious 
and agreeable letter-writer. His letters are, in general, collo- 
quial and easy in style, clever and full of comment, and, upon 
the whole, entitled to rank with the best specimens of familiar 
correspondence in the Greek language. Of the class of letters 
called familiar, the epistle of Julian to the Emperor Constan- 
tius, on his assuming the purple by the compulsion of his 
army, is certainly not one, being rather a document contain- 
ing the exposition of a fact which was to account for an event, 
on which the fortunes of the empire were suspended. It is, 
however, a proper prelude to the few letters I shall produce 
of this extraordinary man, as bringing him before the reader, 
when taking the first step of his short and brilliant career, as 
Emperor of the world. The legions of which Julian was in- 
vested with the command as Csesar, and which he had led so 
often to victory in Gaul and Germany, were ordered by Con- 
stantius to march into the east. At this destination, to a new 
and distant scene of danger and toil, the army was indignant. 
A tumult arose, and, from the subordinate dignity of Caesar, 
Julian was exalted, by military acclamation, to the supreme 
rank of Augustus j and upon this event the following epistle, 
preserved by the historian Ammianus, was written. It seems 
to have been composed in his own name and that of the army. 

JULIAN C^SAR TO THE EMPEROR CONSTANTIUS. 

Being always in one and the same opinion, 1 have adhered 
on principle, no less than from regard to my engagements, to 
that which I sincerely proposed, as has been made apparent 
in a number of instances. As soon as I was made Caasar, I 
was exposed by you to all the tumults and horrors of war ; 
yet contented with a delegated commission, I filled your ears 
with frequent accounts of all the successes you could have 
desired, laying no stress upon my own dangers, though it was 
continually proved that the Germans being everywhere dis- 
persed and routed, I was foremost in labour, and the last in 
seeking rest. 



398 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

You shall hear whether any changes have been made by 
me as you suppose. The soldiers having wasted their lives in 
severe campaigns, without advantage, and being discontented 
with the rule of one of the second order, a Caesar not having 
it in his power to recompense them for their daily fatigues, and 
frequent victories, and being unappeased by any increase of 
honours, or by receiving the year's pay now due ; and rinding 
themselves, contrary to their expectation, ordered to the re- 
motest parts of the east, unaccustomed as they are to frozen 
climates, there to be separated from their wives and children, 
and to be driven forwards in a destitute condition, in a state 
of unusual excitement, besieged the palace, exclaiming Julian 
Augustus, with loud and repeated cries. I own I trembled, and 
withdrew, and as long as I could, retired from the scene and 
sought safety in silence. But as no time was allowed me, I 
came forth, with no other guard than my conscious integrity, 
and presented myself to them, thinking that my authority and 
gentle expostulations might restore tranquillity. Their fury 
carried them so far that, on my trying by entreaties to over- 
come their obstinacy, pressing close upon me, they threatened 
immediate death. Subdued at length, after an inward strug- 
gle, and being convinced that if I were killed, another person 
would be declared prince, I gave assent to their wishes, in the 
hope of thus appeasing the tumult. You have here the sub- 
stance of this affair, which I beg you to receive with a favour- 
able impression : and do not think that I have misrepresented 
any thing, nor give any credit to evil reports by persons mali- 
ciously disposed, whose custom it is to turn the revolts of 
princes to their own advantage. But banishing flattery, the 
nurse of vice, cultivate justice, that most excellent of all 
virtues, and receive in all good faith the equitable terms which 
I now propose, regarding them as being for the good both of 
the Roman state, and ourselves, who are allied by consan- 
guinity, and the elevated rank we maintain. (He then pro- 
poses terms of mutual assistance and accommodation, and 
thus concludes.) In giving this counsel, and requesting and 
entreating your acquiescence, I am convinced I am consulting 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 399 

the public good ; for, not to assume to myself more than my 
situation justifies, I know well what may be done by the 
mutual good understanding of princes towards retrieving the 
most difficult and embarrassed affairs ; and the examples of 
our ancestors shew, that where rulers have been of this mind 
and opinion, they have found the true method of living happily, 
and of rendering their memory precious to the latest posterity. 4 



After a fruitless treaty, Julian found it necessary to act with 
promptitude and decision. He did not, however, deem it proper 
to reject at once the terms proposed to him by Constantius, on 
his compliance with which, it was declared the clemency of 
his sovereign was suspended. He was required to renounce the 
appellation and rank of Augustus, and commit the direction 
of military and civil affairs over which he had assumed the 

4 Gibbon observes, that in this negociation Julian claimed no more than he 
already possessed. The delegated authority which he had long exercised over 
the provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, was still obeyed under a name more 
independent and august. The soldiers and the people rejoiced in a revolution 
which was not stained with blood. Florentius was a fugitive; Lupicinus a 
prisoner. The persons who were disaffected to the new government, were dis- 
armed and secured ; and the vacant offices were distributed according to the 
recommendation of merit, by a prince who despised the intrigues of the 
palace, and the clamours of the soldiers. It seems the letters found Con- 
stantius at Csesarea, in Cappadocia. On reading them, the Emperor is said 
to have been extremely enraged. He commanded the Embassadors to with- 
draw, without giving them any further audience. He was very near quitting 
the Persian war, in which he was then engaged, to march immediately against 
Julian. He contented himself, however, with sending a Quaestor to him, 
with a menacing letter, and recalled his principal officers. 

Soon after his being proclaimed Emperor, Julian marched his army against 
Constantius; but previously to his setting out, and some say while on his 
march, he wrote letters to several cities of Greece, to justify his assumption of 
the imperial power. His letter to the Senate and people of Athens is pre- 
served, and may be considered as creditable to the feelings of the writer as to 
his taste in composition. This epistle gives a full and detailed narrative and 
exposition of the conduct and motives of Julian, and is a valuable historical 
record . 

Gibbon says this is one of the best manifestos to be found in any language. 



400 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

government, to the hands of the officers appointed by the 
Emperor. The letter containing these terms was read aloud, 
and the announcement of Julian that he was ready to resign 
the purple, with the consent of those who had raised him to the 
dignity of wearing it, was refused by the universal voice of 
the army. Julian's message in reply to Constantius, written 
in a strain of eloquent resentment and contempt, was, in effect, 
a declaration of war, and " He who, but a few weeks before, 
had celebrated the Christian festival of the Epiphany, made a 
public declaration that he committed the care of his safety to 
the immortal gods, and thus publicly renounced the religion, 
as well as the friendship of Constantius." During the extra- 
ordinary march of Julian, to contest with Constantius the 
empire of the world, the death of the latter was announced to 
him as he approached with his army the walls of the city of 
Aquileia, w T ith the doubtful issue before him of the siege of 
that important but almost impregnable place. As soon as the 
imperial troops in Aquileia were assured of the decease of 
Constantius, they opened the gates of the city, and Julian, 
now in the thirty-second year of his age, acquired the undis- 
puted possession of the Roman empire. 

The historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 
has drawn the portraiture of this prince with a vigorous but 
rather partial hand, the perusal of which will probably in- 
crease the interest with which the letters of this extraordinary 
person are read. The account of Julian, which follows the 
description of his modest entry into Constantinople, to assume 
singly the sceptre of the Roman world, is in the best manner 
of the historian, some of the strokes of whose pencil will 
bring his hero very distinctly before the reader. 

u An innumerable multitude pressed round him with eager 
respect, and were, perhaps, disappointed when they beheld the 
small stature, and simple garb, of a hero, whose inexperienced 
youth had vanquished the barbarians of Germany, and who 
had now traversed, in a successful career, the whole continent 
of Europe, from the shores of the Atlantic to the shores of the 
Bosphorus. A few days afterwards, when the remains of 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 401 

Constantius were landed in the harbour, the subjects of Julian 
applauded the real or affected humanity of their sovereign. 
On foot, and without his diadem, and clothed in a mourning 
habit, he accompanied the funeral as far as the church of the 
Holy Apostles, where the body was deposited ; and if these 
marks of respect may be interpreted as a selfish tribute to the 
birth and dignity of the imperial sovereign, the tears of Julian 
professed to the world, that he had forgotten the injuries, and 
remembered only the obligations which he had received from 
Constantius." 

Philosophy had instructed Julian to compare the advan- 
tages of action and retirement ; but the elevation of his birth, 
and the accidents of his life, never allowed him the freedom 
of choice. He might, perhaps, sincerely have preferred the 
groves of the academy, and the society of Athens ; but he 
was constrained, at first by the will, and afterwards by the 
injustice, of Constantius, to expose his person and fame to the 
dangers of imperial greatness ; and to make himself account- 
able to the world, and to posterity, for the happiness of mil- 
lions. 5 - The throne of Julian, which the death of 

Constantius fixed on an independent basis, was the seat of 
reason, of virtue, and perhaps of vanity. He despised the 
honours, renounced the pleasures, and discharged with inces- 
sant diligence the duties of his exalted station ; and there 
were few among his subjects who would have consented to 
relieve him from the weight of the diadem, had they been 
obliged to submit their time and their actions to the rigorous 
laws which their philosophic Emperor imposed on himself. 
One of his most intimate friends (Libanius) who had often 
shared the frugal simplicity of his table, has remarked, that 
his light and sparing diet (which was usually of the vegetable 

5 It is but too characteristic of the pages of this splendid historian, to 
put the world and its judgment in the place of Him by whom that world 
was created, and who " shall call the heavens from above, and to the earth, 
that He may judge his people. " This fearful accountability hardly assumes 
its proper place and priority in Mr. Gibbon's estimate of our duties, dangers, 
and responsibilities. 

D D 



402 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

kind) left his mind and body always free and active, for 
the various and important business of an author, a pontiff, 

a magistrate, a general, and a prince. He possessed 

such flexibility of thought, and such firmness of attention, 
that he could employ, at the same time, his hand to write, 
his ear to listen, and his voice to dictate ; and pursue at once 
three several trains of ideas, without hesitation, and without 
error. While his ministers reposed, the prince flew with 
agility from one labour to another, and, after a hasty dinner, 
retired to his library, till the public business, which he had 
appointed for the evening, summoned him to interrupt the 

prosecution of his studies. By this avarice of time he 

seemed to protract the short duration of his reign ; and if the 
dates were less securely ascertained, we should refuse to be- 
lieve, that only sixteen months elapsed between the death of 
Constantius, and the departure of his successor for the Per- 
sian war. The actions of Julian can only be preserved by 
the care of the historian ; but the portion of his voluminous 
writings, which is still extant, remains as a monument of the 
application, as well as of the genius, of the emperor. 

His reformation of the palace, his correction of abuses in 
the administration of public justice, his love of freedom, and 
the forms and spirit of the republic, his disregard of all state 
and pomp, his care of the Grecian cities, his laborious admin- 
istration of civil and military affairs, are set before us by the 
historian with all his accustomed vigour, borrowing additional 
animation from his feelings of partiality ; and the detail of 
these particulars is brought to a satisfactory close in the 
general draught of his hero's character, in the following 
terms: "The generality of princes, if they were stripped of 
their purple, and cast naked into the world, would immedi- 
ately sink into the lowest rank of society, without a hope of 
emerging from their obscurity. But the personal merit of 
Julian was, in some measure, independent of his fortune. 
Whatever had been his choice of life ; by the force of intrepid 
courage, lively wit, and intense application, he would have 
obtained, or, at least, he would have deserved, the highest 



TO THE TIME OF L1BANIUS. 403 

honours of his profession ; and Julian might have raised him- 
self to the rank of minister, or general, of the state in which 
he was born a private citizen. If the jealous caprice of power 
had disappointed his expectations ; if he had prudently de- 
clined the paths of greatness, the employment of the same 
talents in studious solitude would have placed, beyond the 
reach of kings, his present happiness, and his immortal fame. 
When we inspect with minute, or, perhaps, malevolent atten- 
tion, the portrait of Julian, something seems wanting to the 
grace and perfection of the whole figure. His genius was 
less powerful and sublime than that of Caesar ; nor did he 
possess the consummate prudence of Augustus. The virtues 
of Trajan appear more steady and natural, and the philosophy 
of Marcus is more simple and consistent. Yet Julian sus- 
tained adversity with firmness, and prosperity with modera- 
tion. After an interval of one hundred and twenty years, 
from the death of Alexander Severus, the Romans beheld an 
emperor, who made no distinction between his duties and his 
pleasures ; who laboured to relieve the distress, and to revive 
the spirit of his subjects ; and who endeavoured always to 
connect authority with merit, and happiness with virtue. Even 
faction, and religious faction, was constrained to acknowledge 
the superiority of his genius, in peace as well as in war ; and 
to confess with a sigh, that the apostate Julian was a lover of 
his country, and that he deserved the empire of the world. " 

Thus Julian comes forth in the pages of the luminous his- 
torian, but cold Christian. It is just, however, to that histo- 
rian to remark that his partiality did not prevent his admitting 
in its full extent, the affectation and vanity of his hero. He 
would, however, have made his own equity clearer, had he 
remembered, in summing up the character of Julian, to notice 
with due reprehension his gross dissimulation; 6 and to lay 

6 Dm simulavit Christi sacris se adhaerere, et etiara in memoriis martyrum 
frequenter versatus ; et inter lectores ecclesiae nomen professus est suura. — 
Ab. a.c. 355, Caesar publica in ecclesia sacris intermit. Sed simul ac adversus 
eum, factum jam Augustum, Patruelis, Constantius Imp. infestum animum 
prodidisset, ac deinde, Constantio mortuo, Julianus solus obtinuisset impe- 



404 FROM THE TIME OF PHiLOSTRATUS 

more stress upon the fact, that until he was created Augustus, 
and was in collision with the Emperor Constantius, he ad- 
hered to the faith in which he was educated, attended all the 
services of the sanctuary, and the celebration of the martyrs, 
and was one among the lecturers of the church ; but that im- 
mediately on his assuming the highest imperial dignity, he 
became a public and professed idolater. 

Affectation is so large an interpreter of human actions, that 
it may not be the proper subject of severe scrutiny, in one, 
especially, who acted so public a part on the great theatre of 
the world. Of his vanity it must be acknowledged that it 
had, upon the whole, rather a noble bearing ; and excited 
an emulation in his bosom, which kept some of his greater 
qualities in lively exercise. There is hardly a character in 
history which has been so variously represented, according to 
the very opposite sentiments of those, into whose hands it has 
fallen. He was, without controversy, a great man — rising 
always far above his fortunes, and greatly superior to the cor- 
ruptions of courts, and the pomps of empire. Even the 
Christian, on moral grounds, owes some tribute to his me- 
mory ; and if, when he reads of the dying hero, staining with 
his blood the field of victory, he drops a tear upon the page, 
let him not be ashamed of the humanity which mourns over 
the perversities of our prostrate nature. 

At the risk of being accused of irreverence, if not of profane- 
ness, by those who consider the fourth century as the period 
in which Christianity attained its full stature, I must say that 
I find in it some shades of apology for the prejudices of Julian, 
and will venture to surmise that even the fathers of the church, 
with all their general excellencies, did nevertheless display 

rium, Idololatrum se, et atrocem Christianismi hostem et insectatorem palam 
professus est. — Christi doctrinam oppugnavit, scriptis nihilque interraisit quo 
Christianis aegrefacere, et idolorum cultum promovere possit, licet a nece 
plerumque, nam interdum etiam sub Juliano atrocious in Christianos suppli- 
ers animadversum, abstinuit, quod priorum persecutorum exemplo edoctus, 
hoc pacto opprimi ecclesiara non posse, martyrii quoque gloriam Christianis 
invideret. Fabricius Bibl. Graec. L. v, c. 41, ed. Hamb. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 405 

before the eyes of the unhappy prince so incorrect a represen- 
tation of the Christian life and character, and a religious theory 
and belief so at variance, in some respects, with gospel-sim- 
plicity and scripture-truth, as to furnish his unwilling mind 
with but too plausible a ground on which to take his stand, 
and marshal all the strength of his boasting philosophy. If 
the fathers of the fourth century, instead of presenting Chris- 
tianity to the contemplation of Julian in the uncomely dress 
in which superstition had clothed it, with its human atone- 
ments, and with its theatrical apparatus of relics and wonders, 
had shewn to him what has been done for us, in its all-suffi- 
cient and affecting dignity, as the work of a forgiving God, 
and a dying Saviour, and as the gift of free and sovereign grace, 
the cost of which was paid by one comprehensive and solitary 
sacrifice, extensive as sin itself, and appropriated by the be- 
lieving heart, — if they had thus presented it to Julian, in its 
simple majesty and beauty, standing entire on its own proper 
basis of revelation and testimony, his mind might have been 
better disposed to the reception of truth, and to see in their 
real deformity the monstrous absurdities to which he had sur- 
rendered his understanding;. 7 

7 The religious character of the fourth century stands out very prominently 
in most of the writers contemporary with that period, so much eulogised of late. 
Augustin, adverting to the miserable superstitions which were everywhere pre- 
valent in his day, avows himself afraid to speak against them, for fear of scan- 
dalizing many holy persons, or provoking those that were turbulent. " Nay," 
he says, " the Catholic church itself did see, and dissemble and tolerate them.'' 
Multa quae in divinis libris saluberrime praecepta sunt minus curantur ; and 
then, tam multis praesumptionibus sic plena sunt omnia. The same father, in 
his confessions, gives full credit to the miracles wrought by the martyrs Ger- 
vasius and Protasius, whose bodies, when discovered and dug up, and carried 
to St. Ambrose's church, not only drove out the unclean spirits from those of 
whom they had possession, but restored sight to a blind man, on his being per- 
mitted to touch the bier with his handkerchief. To this marvellous operation 
and miraculous exhibition Ambrose was assisting, and the story comes to us 
with the full credit of his name and patronage. 

Sulpicius Severus, who had hardly a right to find fault with extravagance of 
opinion, but to whose authority surely much respect is due on the subject of 
right religious conduct, has borne a strong testimony against the practice of the 
church in his time, which the eulogizers of the pure religion of the fourth 



406 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

The epistles of Julian have been collected by various hands, 
at various periods. They may be considered as amounting 
to between seventy and eighty, some having a better claim 
than others to be received as genuine : but they appear, in 



century must find it difficult to reconcile to the partial retrospect with which 
they regard it. Having spoken of the example of moderation given by the 
Levites, for whom so slender a provision was made, he proceeds thus, Equi- 
dem hoc exemplum non tacitus praeterierim : legendumque ministris ecclesi- 
arum libenter ingesserim. Etenim praecepti hujus non solum immemores, 
sed etiam ignari mihi videntur; tanta hoc tempore animos eorum habendi 
cupido, veluti tabes, incessit. Inhiant possessionibus, praedia excolunt, auro 
incubant, emunt venduntque, qusestui per omnia student. At si qui melioris 
propositi videntur, neque possidentes, neque negociantes, quod est multo 
turpius, sedentes munera expectant; atque omne vitae decus mercede cor- 
ruptum habent,dum quasi venalem praeferunt sanctitatem. Sed longius quam 
volui egressus sum dum me temporum nostrorum piget, taedetque. Sulpic. 
Sev. Sacr. Hist. 1. i. s. 43. 

The miracles imputed to the relics of St. Babylas have Chrysostom for their 
zealous advocate; and instances might be greatly multiplied to shew that all 
the fathers of this century adopted, and promoted the belief of all manner of 
stories of the same kind. 

I cannot dismiss this note without giving as specimens a story or two from 
Sulpicius Severus out of his marvellous budget. The cow has figured so little 
in these extraordinary transactions, that it is but fair towards it to give it the 
first place. As Martin (the famous bishop of Tours, originally a soldier in the 
Roman army) was returning from Treves, he was met by a cow, which cow was 
possessed by a demon, and was wont to leave the herd and goad the passers 
by. When she approached, those who followed her at a distance vociferated 
their warning to keep out of her way. But on her coming near to us, with 
fury in her eyes, Martin, lifting up his hand, commanded her to stand still, 
and at the word she stood fixed in her place. When Martin perceived the 
demon sitting on her back, " Depart," said he, " thou pest, and leave off 
worrying this harmless animal," and forthwith the fiend obeyed, and departed. 
Nor was the cow unconscious of her deliverance, or to whom she was indebted 
for it. She first cast herself at the feet of the saint with her tranquillity restored 
to her, and then, at the bidding of Martin, returned to her companions as 
gentle as a lamb. 

Another, equally entitled to credit, Sulpicius introduces in the following 
terms, with this additional ingredient of wonder in it, that the miracle was not 
performed by Martin, but by a friend in his name. " A very troublesome dog 
(importunior) was barking at us ; in the name of Martin I bid you to be quiet ; 
the dog's voice stuck in his throat (haesit in guttura), he was so quiet that one 
might suppose his tongue had been cut out. It was not enough that Martin him- 



TO THE TIME OF LIBAN1US. 407 

general, to be drawn from repertories which entitle them to 
credit ; while their internal evidence may be also adduced 
in their support. 8 Many of them are the effusions of private 
friendship, and have the ease and vivacity which belong to 



self should perform cures, believe me when I say that others wrought many in 
his name." St. Peter and St. John were outdone ; see Acts iv. from 7 to 10. 
" When they had set them in the midst, they asked by what power, or by what 
name, have you done this ? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto 
them, ' Ye rulers of the people and elders of Israel, if we this day be examined 
of the good deed done to the impotent man, be it known unto you all, and to 
all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom 
ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man 
stand before you whole/" 

Those who are entertained with stories of this kind may find many in Sul- 
picius of a similar character ; or, if he would be more pleased with them in a 
poetical dress, he may peruse them with the advantage of the muse of Paulinus 
of Nola. 

8 The nine first, among numerous Greek epistles, were printed by Aldus in 
1499, 4to. The tenth was preserved by Socrates in his history, iii. 3. The 
others to the forty-eighth all appear in the collection of the Epistolse Graecanicae 
Mutuae published in 1 606, in folio, with a later translation attributed to Cujacius ; 
though this has been denied by learned men, and by Gronovius among others, 
who has considered the translation as falsely ascribed to that able and eminent 
scholar. Sozomen, in his ecclesiastical history, has preserved the 49th. See lib. 
v. c. 16. Peter Martinius first added the 50th, 51st, and 52d in Greek, toge- 
ther with other epistles. Paris, 1567 and 1583, 8vo. The succeeding epistles 
to the 57th inclusive, were published at Leyden, by Bonav. Vulcanius, at the 
end of the problems and epistles of Theophylactus Simocatta. The 58th and 
59th, doubtfully blended together, were first published by Nicholas Recalt, 
who added a translation at the end of his funus Parasiticum. Paris, 1601, 
4to. And both were published, but divided into two by Petau, or Petavius, 
till they were made complete, by the addition of the remainder supplied from 
a MS. by Muratori, in his Anecdota Grseca, in 1709, 4to. The 60th, 61st, 
and 62d, were first published by Petau, from a copy of an old MS. lent him 
by Patricius Junius. The 63d, which Martinius and Petau have given in 
Greek only, but very imperfectly and incorrectly, Ezekiel Spanheim amended, 
and supplied from the MS. of Allatius, and first added a Latin version. 
Muratori has also published three other epistles of Julian, the 64th, 65th, 
and 66th, from the same MS. See Fabric. Bibl. edit. Hamburg, 1790, 1. v. 
c. 41. For the remainder of the epistles of Julian, we are indebted to the 
researches of Fabricius, Muratori, Petau, and Rostgaard, a Danish nobleman, 
who was a great investigator of literary antiquities; copied from MSS. in the 
Vatican, Medicean, and Ambrosian libraries. 



408 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

letters of that kind ; others are edicts in the form of epistles, 
and some are styled by Gibbon " pastoral letters" dictated 
by the Emperor as Sovereign Pontiff. 

JULIAN TO PROH.ERESIUS.9 

Why should I not address the excellent Prohseresius, one who 
pours forth his words as copiously as rivers when they over- 
flow the meads ; the rival of Pericles in eloquence, except 
that he does not agitate and embroil Greece. Be not sur- 
prised that I imitate the Lacedemonian brevity. It becomes 
you wise men to make long and prolix speeches ; from me to 
you a few words will be enough. Understand then that I 
have a great deal of embarrassing business on my hands. If 
you are writing a history, I will furnish you with an exact ac- 
count of the cause by letters, which will serve as written 
testimonies : but if your purpose is to pass the remainder of 
your life in your present exercises and studies, and giving 
lectures, you will not, perhaps, have any cause to complain of 
my silence. 

TO ARISTOMENES. 

Do you think it necessary to wait to be invited ; and will such 
formality never be rendered superfluous by friendship and 
kindness ? Let us avoid bringing on such a troublesome code 
of rules in the commerce of friendship, as shall make friends 
expect as much from each other as common acquaintances. 
Does any one ask how we come to be friends when we are per- 
sonally unknown to each other, I answer by another question, 
— How is it that we are the friends of those who were living 
one or two thousand years before us? because they were 

9 One of the Christian professors, who were obliged by Julian's edict to 
close their schools. His profession of a teacher of Rhetoric was exercised by 
him principally at Athens, but he was everywhere celebrated; and at Rome, 
such was the admiration in which he was held, that a statue was erected to him. 
Eunapius was a disciple of this sophist. His death was celebrated by Gregory 
Nazianzen, in an epigram preserved by Muratori,in his Anecdota Graeca. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 409 

virtuous, good, and honest men. We are desirous of resem- 
bling them. And though, as regards myself, I am conscious 
of being far behind them in attainments, yet in zeal and affec- 
tion I am not far distant from them. 

But to leave trifling. If you come uninvited, you will come, 
and that is what I want ; if you expect an invitation, behold 
one. Therefore, by Jupiter hospitalis, be with me, I entreat 
you, without delay. Shew us a true and genuine Greek 
among the Cappadocians : 10 for as yet I see only some who with 
unwilling minds, and some few who with better dispositions, 
but without knowing how properly to perform the duty, sacri- 
fice to the gods. 

TO ECDICIUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT. 

Although you write to me on no other subject, you ought 
surely to have written to me concerning Athanasius, the enemy 
of the gods ; especially as you have long well known our edicts 
against him, so justly merited. I now swear by the great 
Serapis, that if that enemy of the gods does not leave Alexan- 
dria, or rather all Egypt, before the calends of December, the 
army under your command shall be fined a hundred pounds 
of gold. You know how slow I am in condemning, but how 
much slower in remitting a sentence once passed. It grieves 
me greatly to see how all the gods are despised by that person, 
Nothing that you can do, would give me more satisfaction to 
see and hear of, than that you had driven Athanasius out of 
every part of Egypt ; n that infamous man ; who has presumed 

10 Avdpa ev KcnnradoicaiQ KaQapwg 'EWrjva. Caesarea, the capital city of 
Cappadocia, was nearly composed of Christians ; and the temples of Jupiter 
and Apollo were almost wholly destroyed when this letter was written. The 
last heathen structure that remained was the temple of Fortune, and that had 
lately been demolished. Julian had confiscated the property of the churches, 
forced the clergy into the militia, and put to death those who had assisted in 
the destruction of the temple of Fortune. He furthermore took from the city 
its municipal name, and made it resume its old name of Mazaca. 

11 According to the Abbe de La Bleterie, who published in 1735, La vie 
de l'Empereur Julian, that Emperor, not content with banishing Athanasius, 



410 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

under my reign to urge 12 Greek women of illustrious rank to 
be baptized. 

TO AE.TABIUS. 

By the gods ! I would neither have the Galileans put to death 
nor scourged, contrary to justice, nor suffer any other injurious 
treatment. I think, indeed, that the worshippers of the gods 
should be more esteemed and honoured ; for by the madness 
of these Galileans, all things have been well nigh overturned ; 
had we not by the goodness of the gods been all preserved. 
It is our duty, therefore, to pay respect to the gods, and to all 
pious individuals and states. 

TO ECDTCIUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT. 

Some delight in horses, some in birds, and others in wild 
beasts. The love of books was from my early youth my ruling 
passion. It would be disgraceful, therefore, for me to look 
quietly on, while those, whose avarice gold alone cannot sa- 
tisfy, are stealthily appropriating these things. Do me, there- 
fore, the particular kindness to find for me all the books which 
belonged to George ; for he was in possession of many well 
written books on philosophy, many on rhetoric ; and not a 
few on the doctrine of the Galileans ; which last I could wish 
were put out of existence ; but lest others more valuable 
should be destroyed together with them, let all of them be 

gave, perhaps, secret orders to put him to death ; or at least, Ecdicius, to in- 
gratiate himself with Julian, who seemed to think him negligent, resolved upon 
his death. Athanasius was retiring into Thebais when he was told he was pur- 
sued. " Fear nothing," said he to his companions, " let us shew that he who 
protects us, is greater than he who persecutes us ;" saying this, he ordered the 
boat in which he was carried to be steered back to Alexandria. They were 
met by the assassin, who asked them if they had seen Athanasius, and whether 
he was far off. They answered, he was near, and that, if they made haste, 
they would not fail to overtake him. The assassin made haste, but in vain. 
Athanasius returned to Alexandria, and there remained concealed. It must 
be owned that the suspicion cast upon Julian seems to rest upon no foundation. 
12 Siu)Ki<j9ai. An ambiguous word in this place. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 411 

carefully examined. Let the secretary of George be your 
guide in this search ; and, if he acts with good faith, let him 
have his freedom as his reward ; but if otherwise, he may be 
put to the torture. When I was in Cappadocia, George lent 
me some of his books to transcribe ; and these were returned 
to him. 13 

TO MAX1MUS 14 THE PHILOSOPHER. 

Fame has recorded that Alexander of Macedon used to sleep 
upon the poems of Homer, that night and day he might be in 
converse with his military instructions. But I sleep with your 
epistles, as so many Pseonian medicines; and continue to recur 
to them with the same freshness of enjoyment as if they were 
for the first time in my hands. If, therefore, you are desirous 
of impressing your picture on my mind by your writings, write, 
continually write, or, what is still better, come yourself, the 
gods befriending you ; being assured of this, that as long as 
you are absent I can hardly be said to live, except only when 
I have the good fortune to receive your letters. 



13 The fate of George, who was promoted to the primacy of Egypt on the 
expulsion of Athanasius, is well known. He was born in Cilicia, and re- 
ceived his education in Cappadocia. He owed his exaltation to his profession 
of Arianism. His violent and oppressive conduct occasioned his expulsion by 
the people in the reign of Constantius ; and being by military force again seated 
in his authority, his violence and injustice was such, that a cruel end was put 
to him by the fury of the populace. This George of Cappadocia, by a strange 
perversion of historical truth, has become the St. George, and patron Saint, of 
England. 

14 Maximus was one of the philosophers and friends of Julian who accom- 
panied him in his Persian expedition, and was with him when he was mortally 
wounded. The last words of Julian were uttered in an argument with Maxi- 
mus and Priscus, on the nature of the soul, Ammianus, xxx. 5, which some 
have thought was affected in imitation of Socrates. Maximus was in the highest 
reputation as a philosopher in Julian's reign. Lardner thinks him not a wise 
man, but such as he was, he was in great favour with Julian. He was impri- 
soned in the reign of Valens, and finally beheaded, on a charge of using 
magical arts, by Festus, proconsul of Asia, in 374. A charge of magic was 
often fatal to the accused in the reign of the Emperor Valens. 



412 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 



TO THE COMMUNITY OF THE JEWS. 

The taxes to which you are obliged to submit, and the large 
quantity of gold you are compelled to pay into the treasury, 
under surreptitious decrees, were in former times more burthen- 
some to you than the yoke of servitude under which you lived : 
of which I saw much with my own eyes, and have learned more 
from the edicts against you which have been preserved. The 
tribute about to be again exacted from you I have prohibited. 
I have put a stop to such a gross impiety ; and the decrees 
against you, remaining in my office, I have given to the flames. 
Of these things the memorable Constantius, my brother, was 
not so much the cause, as those barbarous and atheistical men 
who frequented his table ; whom I laid hold of and had them 
cast into a dungeon and destroyed, that no memorial of them 
might remain among us. Being desirous of giving you still more 
distinguished marks of my favour, I have urged my brother 
Julus, your most venerable patriarch, to forbid the tax which 
is called by you a7ro^oXrj, 15 and to take care that no one may 
be able, for the future, to oppress your community with such 
exactions ; that you may be able to live with ease and comfort 
in my dominions ; and that, under a sense of such benefits, 

15 After the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews are said to have preserved a 
sort of monarchy, under an Ethnarch, styled also Patriarch, to whom a tribute 
was paid by all the synagogues of the east and west; and those who were 
commissioned to levy this tax were called apostles, or envoys. These patri- 
archs made themselves odious by their extortions and rapine ; and the system 
lasted only to the beginning of the fifth century. See Tillemont's Hist, des 
Emp. vol. i. The foreign Jews in Palestine seem to be still supported by 
contributions sent from Europe ; the collecting of which used to be by send- 
ing messengers, D"n s bu>, from Jerusalem to the different cities of Europe for 
the purpose. But this being a very expensive method, it has been discon- 
tinued ; and the money is sent to Amsterdam, where it is received by a rich 
Jewish merchant, who transmits it to the Austrian consul at Beyrout, by 
whom it is conveyed to Jerusalem . The average amount is said to be 7000 
ducats, or 14,000 dollars,=2800/. See Narr. of a Mission of Enq. to the 
Jews from the Ch. of Scotland, 1839. The messengers of the churches for 
collecting contributions are called a7ro<ro\oi £KK\r)<nu>v, in 2 Cor. viii. 23. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 413 

you may be more fervent in your prayers for my empire to the 
most potent God, the Creator of all things, who has conde- 
scended to crown me with his own unsullied hand. Those 
who are tormented with cares and anxieties have their minds 
clogged and fettered, so that they cannot so much as lift up 
their hands in prayer ; whereas those who are free, and un- 
shackled with care, have cheerful hearts to offer up their sup- 
plications to God, who is able to make the state as happy and 
prosperous as I wish it to be ; which prayers it is your duty 
to offer up, that when I shall have brought the Persian war to 
a happy conclusion, I may dwell in your holy city of Jerusalem ; 
which these many years I have been desirous of seeing inha- 
bited by you, restored by my labours ; and may therein unite 
with you in giving glory to God. 



The above singular epistle has been suspected to have been 
a forgery, on account of some extraordinary expressions it 
contains, and particularly the declaration that he had arrested 
the informers against them with his own hands, and thrust 
them into prison. But it is certain that in the chamber of 
justice established by Julian, the favourites and informers about 
the court of Constantius were proceeded against with the 
greatest rigour. And from many sources we learn that Julian 
sent for some of the leading Jews, to enquire of them why they 
did not sacrifice as the law of Moses directed ; to which enquiry 
they answered, that they were not permitted to sacrifice in any 
place but Jerusalem ; and that the temple being destroyed, 
they were obliged to forbear that part of their worship : upon 
which he promised to rebuild their temple. And, says Lard- 
ner, " we still have a letter of Julian inscribed ' To the com- 
munity of the Jews/ which, however extraordinary, must be 
reckoned genuine ; for Sozomen expressly says, that ' Julian 
wrote to the patriarchs and rulers of the Jews, and to their 
whole nation, desiring them to pray for him, and for the pros- 
perity of his reign. '" 



414 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

Gibbon, in a note to the passage wherein he notices this 
public epistle of Julian to the Jews, observes, that " Aldus 
has branded it with an u yvriaiog, but adds that this stigma 
is justly removed by the subsequent editors, Octavius and 
Spanheim." And Warburton thinks that what Gregory Na- 
zianzen, in his second invective, tells us of the conference that 
followed this letter, plainly shews it to be genuine ; for Julian 
assured the leaders of the Jews, that he had discovered from 
their sacred books, that the time of their restoration was at 
hand. " It is not a mere curiosity," says the bishop of Glou- 
cester, " to enquire what prophecy it was that Julian perverted ; 
because it tends to confirm the truth of Nazianzen's relation. 
I have sometimes thought it might possibly be the words of 
the Septuagint in Dan. ix. 27, SuiteAho. ^o^o-srat £7rt rr\v 
epYifitoGiv (the ambiguity of which expression Julian took the 
advantage of against the helenistic Jews, who probably knew 
no more of the original than himself), signifying ' the tribute 
shall be given to the desolate,' instead of ' the consummation 
shall be poured upon the desolate;' for the letter in question 
tells us he had remitted their tribute, and, by so doing, we 
see, he was for passing himself upon them for a second Cyrus." 
Alypius, whose humanity, says Gibbon, was tempered by 
severe justice and manly fortitude, had an extraordinary com- 
mission from Julian to rebuild the temple, and the diligence 
of Alypius obtained the strenuous support of the governor of 
Palestine. The work was begun, and prosecuted with the 
greatest enthusiasm. The men forgot their avarice, and the 
women their delicacy. Spades and pickaxes of silver were 
provided by the vanity of the rich, and the rubbish was trans- 
ported in mantles of silk and purple. And now was exhibited 
one of the most remarkable and best attested miracles men- 
tioned in history; an earthquake, a whirlwind, and a fiery 
eruption, which overturned and scattered the new foundations 
of the temple." 

Ammianus Marcellinus, commended by Gibbon as a phi- 
losophic soldier, who loved the virtues without adopting the 
prejudices of his master, has recorded in his judicious and 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 415 

candid history of his own times, the extraordinary obstacles 
which interrupted the restoration of the temple of Jerusalem. 
Lardner has declared his suspicion of the miracle, grounding 
that suspicion chiefly on the silence of Jerome, Prudentius, and 
Orosius; but for the miracle there is, besides the testimony 
of Ammianus Marcellinus, a heathen, the following affirmative 
authorities, brought together in Whitby's general Preface 
(p. 28) ; Zemuch David, a Jew, who confesses that Julian was 
divinitus impeditus ; Gregory Nazianzen, and Chrysostom, 
among the Greeks ; St. Ambrose and Ruffinus among the 
Latins, who flourished at the very time of the alleged fact ; 
Theodoret and Sozomen, orthodox historians ; Philostorgius, 
an Arian ; Socrates, a favourer of the Novatians, who wrote 
the story within fifty years after the event, and whilst the 
eyewitnesses of the fact were yet surviving. The whole ac- 
count is fully given by Dr. Warburton, who has, says Bishop 
Newton, set the evidence in the clearest light, and refuted 
all objections, to the triumph of faith, and the confusion of 
infidelity. 

TO AMERIUS. 

I did not read your letter in which you informed me of the death 
of your wife, and expressed the extreme affliction which this 
loss has occasioned you, without tears. The thing itself is very 
affecting — a young wife, modest, the delight of her husband, 
and the mother of pious children, snatched away before her 
time, like a torch just set in a blaze and immediately extin- 
guished. Though the loss is peculiarly yours, it almost as 
affectingly touches myself. Least of all did my excellent friend 
seem to deserve such a stroke of affliction ; a man full of know- 
ledge, and one of my friends the most valued by me. If I were 
writing to another man on the same subject, I should think it 
necessary to use many words in shewing him that what he 
now suffers is the common lot of human beings ; that it must 
be patiently borne; that we gain nothing by indulging our 
grief; and, in short, should make use of all those ordinary 
arguments which seem best adapted to mitigate the sufferings 



416 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

of an inexperienced person. But as I consider that I am 
addressing one who is in the practice of giving counsel to 
others, I am ashamed of employing arguments, which are 
used to improve and instruct the ignorant. Waving, there- 
fore, all such topics of consolation, I will relate a fable, or it 
may be a true story, to you, perhaps, not unknown, though I 
believe not known to many, by the sole use of which, as a sort 
of Nepenthes, you may find a no less effectual remedy for 
your grief, than the cup which the Spartan dame is said on a 
similar occasion to have given to Telemachus. 16 The story 
is, that Democritus of Abdera, finding that nothing he could 
say could afford any solace to the mind of Darius, who was 
mourning the loss of his beautiful wife, promised to restore 
her to life, if he, the king, would, on his part, supply that 
which was necessary to be done preparatory to the undertak- 
ing. Darius desired him to spare no expense, but to take 
every necessary step toward the performance of his promise. 
Soon afterwards Democritus told the king that things were 
ready for the performance of the work ; one thing only 
was wanting, and that he knew not how to procure, but 
Darius, as sovereign of all Asia, would, perhaps, find no 
difficulty in providing it. On his enquiry what that great 
thing was, which it was for a king only to know how to per- 
form, Democritus is said to have replied, " if you will write 
on the tomb of your wife the names of three persons who had 
entirely escaped all affliction, she will forthwith be restored 
to life." Darius being perplexed, and unable to name any 
one that had suffered no affliction, Democritus, laughing, 
thus addressed him, " Are you not ashamed, O most unreason- 
able of mortals, thus to give way to grief, as if you were the 
only one in the world who had been exposed to calamity, 
while you are unable to point out a single individual who has 
not endured some domestic loss or misfortune?" 17 Darius, a 
barbarian, and untutored man, required to be instructed by 

16 Odyss. 1. iv. v. 220. 

17 La Bletterie considers this story of Democritus and Darius as a sort of 
philosophical novel. The story, he says, is no where found. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBAN1US. 417 

such lessons as these ; but you, who are a Greek, and have 
been instituted in sound learning, are expected to govern 
yourself; otherwise a discredit would be cast upon reason 
itself, if it should appear to be unable to mitigate sorrow as 
effectually as time. 



EPISTLE, OR EDICT, FORBIDDING THE CHRISTIANS TO TEACH 
POLITE LITERATURE. 

We consider true learning to consist not in words, nor in the 
harmony of polished language, but in the sound constitution 
.of a well regulated mind, and right conceptions of good and 
evil, of the beautiful and the base. Whosoever, therefore, has 
other views, and teaches other notions to his hearers, is as far 
from being a learned, as he is from being a good man. If 
there is a variance between the mind and the tongue, even in 
small and trifling things, it is evil as far as it extends ; but if 
in things of great importance there is a discordancy between 
what a man thinks, and what he teaches, does he not resemble 
the vendor of adulterated food. It is not the conduct of 
respectable men, but of knaves. Those, therefore, who teach 
what in their real opinions they deem to be false and wicked, 
are deceptious and ensnaring in what they recommend. All 
who undertake the office of teachers, whatever may be the 
subject matter, ought to be characterized by the strictest 
probity and integrity, and to be incapable of the unworthy 
practice of disseminating opinions, which are at variance with 
those which they mentally hold ; and, above all others, such 
integrity of proceeding is becoming in those who are engaged 
in the profession of teaching and instructing the young, and 
expounding the writings of the ancients, whether they are 
rhetoricians or grammarians, but especially if they are sophists, 
for they desire to be considered as qualified to teach not only 
how to speak, but how to live, and profess to give lessons in 
political philosophy. Whether this be so or not, I shall not 
at present consider. I give due commendation to those who 
hold out the promise of such good things, but I should com- 

E E 



418 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

mend them much more if they did not belie and contradict 
themselves, by thinking one thing, and teaching their scholars 
another. What ! Did not the gods conduct the studious 
labours of Homer, and Hesiod, and also of Demosthenes, and 
Herodotus, and Thucydides, and Isocrates, and Lysias ? Did 
not some of these consider themselves devoted to Mercury, 
and others to the Muses ? It is absurd, therefore, for those 
who give lectures on their works, to despise the gods whom 
they honoured. I am not so unreasonable as to hold that 
these teachers ought to change their minds for the sake of the 
youths they instruct, but I give them their choice, either to 
forbear teaching what they do not deem to be right and good, 
or, if they choose to teach, let them first persuade their scho- 
lars to think as they do of Homer and Hesiod, and those whom 
they expound ; and let them not, while they charge them with 
impiety, folly, and error, in respect of the objects of their 
worship, seek to gain a subsistence out of their writings ; and 
by receiving a reward for their teaching, confess themselves to 
be influenced by the most sordid motives, and to be acting 
contrary to their consciences for a few drachms. 18 

Hitherto there have, I allow, been many causes to prevent 
their coming to the sacred ceremonies; and the dangers to 
which they have been every where exposed were an excuse 
for their dissembling their real sentiments concerning the 
gods ; but since the gods have granted us liberty, it seems to 
me to be wicked to inculcate doctrines which they do not deem 
to be right and just. 

If they think the writers whom they interpret are really 

~ 8 La Bletterie observes upon this passage, that Julian well knew by his 
own experience that masters, when they explained to their scholars the an- 
cient authors, never failed to insist on the weakness and folly of paganism. 
He was sensible how much a Christian master can contribute to the progress 
of religion, when he interprets profane authors with the spirit of a Christian, 
and equally avails himself of the truth and the falsehood which he finds there, in 
order to conduct his pupils to God and Jesus Christ, This is what Julian 
wished to prevent. But instead of discovering his true motives, he employs 
the most lamentable pretext that can be ; so that this piece of eloquence is a 
master-piece of sophistry. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 419 

wise, let them zealously imitate their piety towards the gods. 
But if they think these excellent men to have been in great 
error, let them go to the churches of the Galileans, and there 
expound Matthew and Luke, in obedience to whom you pro- 
claim that sacrifices are to be abstained from. 

I would your ears and tongues were, as you express it, rege- 
nerated, in those things in which I wish that myself, and all 
who in sentiment and practice are my friends, may participate. 
To masters and scholars, let this be the general law. Let 
none who are desirous of instruction be prevented from resort- 
ing to what school they choose. It would be as unjust to 
exclude children, who are yet ignorant whither to go for in- 
struction, from the best sources, as it would be to drive them 
by fear, and against their wills, to the religious rites of their 
country. And though it might be right to cure men of such 
madness even against their will, yet let indulgence be exercised 
towards all who are under such infatuation ; for the ignorant 
should, in my opinion, not be punished, but instructed. 



No sensible man can peruse the above letter, or edict, with- 
out pronouncing it to be a puerile and contemptible piece of 
sophistry. It was evidently very absurd to charge the Christian 
teachers with inconsistency in imputing weakness and folly 
to paganism, and at the same time proposing to their pupils 
some of the works of pagan writers as the repositories of noble 
sentiments, and models of fine composition : this was very 
different from proposing them generally for adoption or imita- 
tion, or as authorities in religion, or pure morality. The edict 
is marked throughout with as much imbecility of argument as 
a purpose so ungenerous and paltry would naturally suggest. 
The heathens themselves despised it. ^mmianus, Julian's 
own historian, has censured it with severity ; and the Christian 
teachers in general gave up their chairs, rather than teach 
under the restrictions imposed by the edict. Jerome, in his 
Chronicle, says that Prohseresius, the Athenian sophist, shut 
up his school, though the emperor had granted to him a 



420 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATITS 

special license to teach ; and Augustine records the same of 
Victorinus, who had taught rhetoric with great applause at 
Rome. 10 

In a letter to a friend he thus pleasingly describes a little 
farm, of which he makes him a present. It does not appear 
to whom the letter was written. 

I present you with a little farm in Bithynia, which was a 
gift to me from my grandmother, as some return for your 
affectionate attachment to me, — not large enough, indeed, to 
give you a reputation for wealth or a brilliant fortune, but 
which will appear to be by no means without its attractions, 
when I shall have laid before you its particular advantages. 
I know I may venture, in the face of all your learning and 
elegance, to bring the lightest topics in a playful manner 
before you. To begin then. The farm is distant from the 
sea not more than twenty stadia, and neither trader nor the 
noisy vulgarity of sailors disturbs the quiet of the place ; and 
yet it is not destitute of the favours of the sea-god, for it can 
always supply a fresh and gasping fish. You have but to 
ascend a little hillock near the house, and thence you command 
a view of the Propontis and its islands, and also the city 
named from a noble prince. 20 In proceeding thither you do 
not tread on moss and sea weed, nor are you in the smallest 
degree annoyed by the nameless things which are thrown 
upon the shore and sands; but you walk upon a fragrant 
surface of ivy, thyme, and odoriferous plants. It is delightful 
to recline here in quiet with one's book, and ever and anon 
to look off and enjoy the prospect of the ocean, and of the 
vessels riding upon it. It was to me, when a very young man, 
a charming retreat. It is well supplied with springs, a plea- 
sant bath, garden, and orchard. When I grew up I still re- 

19 See the invectives poured by Gregory Naz. upon this edict : 

Tig ~Epfir}Q <roi \oyiog, wg av avrog tnroig, rovr' em vow qyays; Tivig 
Tihyivtg irovr^poi, Kai fiacricavoi Saifiovsg ; k. r. X. 

Kara lovXiav. Ba<ri\. <n]\ir. 7cpu)Tog. 

20 Probably Cyzicus may be meant, who was slain by Jason, and was king 
of the island which seems to have been called after his name. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 421 

tained my fondness for this scene of my early days. I visited 
it often, and my intercourse with it was not unattended with 
instruction. 

There still remains upon this spot a humble monument of 
my husbandry; a little vine, producing a sweet and fragrant 
wine, which needs no keeping to acquire its flavour. You 
will have experience of its quality. * The clusters, whether on 
the tree or in the winepress, emit a perfume like that of the 
rose. The must in the cask is like the nectar which Homer 
describes. You will ask why was not this vine multiplied by 
planting many acres with it ? Perhaps I was not a very dili- 
gent husbandman. But in truth mine is the cup of a sober 
Bacchus, being generally supplied from the pure stream. I 
have only cared, therefore, to provide as much of this more 
generous beverage as might be wanted for myself, and for my 
small number of friends. I make this present to you, my 
friend, sensible that it is but little in itself, but valuable as 
coming from a friend to a friend ; reminding us of the ex- 
pression of Pindar, that truly wise poet, " from house to 
house/' 21 I have written this letter in a hurried manner, by 
the light of my lamp ; so that I must beg you not to read it 
with a critic's eye, or as one rhetorician examines another. 

JULIAN TO THE PEOPLE OF BOSTRA. 22 

I thought the prelates of the Galileans would have felt 
themselves under greater obligation to me, than to him who 
preceded me in the administration of the empire. For in his 
reign many were banished and imprisoned ; and great num- 
bers of those whom they call heretics were put to death. In- 
somuch that in Samosata, Cyzicus, Paphlagonia, Bithynia, 
Galatia, and many other countries, whole villages were laid 
waste, and levelled with the earth. In our reign just the 
reverse has taken place : for the banished were permitted to 

21 OXvfnr. Od. vi. L. 167. OS. vii. L. 6. OncoQev oacaSs. 

22 Called Bozra in Scripture. The capital of ancient Idumaea. 



422 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS. 

return ; and to those whose property had been confiscated, all 
has been restored by our edict. But to that height of fury 
and folly are these prelates arrived, that because they are no 
longer allowed to tyrannise, or to do those things to the injury 
of one another, or of us who piously worship the divinities, they 
are enraged and exasperated, and leave no stone unturned to 
excite the people to tumult and sedition ; in which they mani- 
fest their impiety towards the gods, and their contumacious 
opposition to our edicts, humane as they are. We suffer 
none of them to be drawn against their will to our altars. 
We also publicly declare, that, if any are desirous to be par- 
takers of our libations and lustrations, they must first offer 
sacrifices of expiation, and supplicate the gods, the averters of 
evil : so far are we from desiring to admit any of the irre- 
ligious into communion with our sacred rites, before they have 
purified their souls by supplications to the gods, and their 
bodies by legal ablutions. The populace, deluded by those they 
call their clergy, who are angry at their licence and impunity 
being withdrawn, are become openly tumultuous. For those 
who have up to this time been used to tyrannise, not satisfied 
with being unpunished for their past crimes, but ambitious of 
their former power, because they are not permitted any longer 
to act as magistrates, or to possess themselves of the estates 
of others, and transfer every thing to themselves, pull, so to 
speak, the ropes of sedition, and, as the proverb expresses it, 
add fire to fire, and scruple not to accumulate and aggravate, 
mischiefs, while they urge on the multitude to fresh commo- 
tions. 

Wherefore I have thought fit to declare and make known 
to all the people, by this edict, that they must no longer unite 
with their clergy in seditions and tumults, nor suffer them- 
selves to be persuaded to throw stones, and disobey their 
rulers. They are permitted to assemble themselves together 
when they please, and offer up such prayers as they have 
established for themselves; but if their clergy incite them to 
seditious commotions on their account, let them by no means 
assent to them, on pain of punishment. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 423 

I have deemed it proper to make this particular announce- 
ment to the state of Bostra, because the Bishop Titus and the 
clergy, in certain memorials which they have presented, have 
laid the whole blame upon the people, as being inclined of 
themselves to raise disturbances if they were not withheld 
by their admonitions. I have subjoined to this present edict 
the very words which, in the memorial abovementioned, the 
bishop has presumed to insert. " Though the Christians are 
not inferior in number to the Gentiles, they are restrained by 
our exhortations from being tumultuous." Such are the ex- 
pressions used by the bishop concerning you. You see he 
intimates that your moderation does not arise from your own 
good disposition, but that you refrain in compliance with his 
exhortations. Wherefore consider him as your accuser, and 
as such drive him out of your city. Let the citizens among 
themselves maintain peace and unanimity. Let them not be 
at strife with, and do harm to each other ; neither you that are 
in error to those who rightly and duly worship the gods with 
those ceremonies which have come down to us from the most 
ancient times; nor do you, the worshippers of the gods, do 
violence to or plunder the houses of those who err from igno- 
rance rather than choice. Men should be persuaded and 
taught by argument and discourse, and not by blows, invec- 
tives, and corporal punishments. I therefore again and again 
admonish those who have voluntarily embraced the true reli- 
gion, not in any manner to injure, or insult the Galileans. 
They are rather deserving of commiseration than hate, who 
are fatally misled in a matter of the deepest concern to them. 
For as piety is the greatest of all blessings, so is impiety the 
greatest evil. Such is their misfortune who turn themselves 
from the immortal gods to dead men and their relics. We 
pity the lot of those, who are in these unhappy circumstances ; 
while we greatly congratulate those, who are freed and ex- 
empted by the gods from these errors. 



The noble author of the Characteristics has thought fit to 



424 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

give us, in the third volume of that work, a translation of this 
letter, or edict, to the city of Bostra, to which he has sub- 
joined the following specious compliment to its author. " Thus 
the generous and mild emperor, whom we may indeed call 
heathen, but not so justly apostate; since being, at different 
times of his youth, transferred to different schools or universi- 
ties, and bred under tutors of each religion, as well heathen as 
Christian, he happened, when of full age, to make his choice, 
(though very unfortunately) in the former kind, and adhered 
to the ancient religion of his country and forefathers." 

Thus coolly and philosophically does this noble writer hold 
the scales between the two religions, Heathen and Christian. 
If the latter persuasion receives at his hands some decent 
acknowledgment of superiority, he cannot be said to be defi- 
cient in courtesy to the venerable fanes of the ancient worship, 
which, though it was going fast out of fashion, yet was of 
power to retain, by its expiring grasp, the heart and under- 
standing of a reasoning prince in devotion to its antiquated 
claims. Between the two rival creeds the mind of Lord 
Shaftesbury appeared hardly decided, most liberally allow- 
ing to all the full freedom of choice, as on a question to be 
wholly referred to the arbitrament of reason. But how his 
lordship could reconcile his omission of the entire passage 
relating to Titus, the bishop of Bostra, to his sense of equity, 
it is difficult to say. Titus appears, on the best testimony, 
to have been a learned divine, and an estimable man ; and 
what the emperor in his edict declared concerning him to the 
citizens of Bostra, was evidently inserted for the purpose of 
incensing them against their bishop, and of bringing him 
under the chastisement of a mob : therefore, it seemed good 
to the noble translator to omit what was so little 'to the 
credit of the emperor. Alas! there is no difficulty in all 
this. Julian was himself a type of all that genus of intellec- 
tual men who will subscribe to no truths but those which 
come within the clear scope of their own reasoning facul- 
ties; in short, who reject revelation as such, where it has not 
the sanction of what they cail experience, and is not reconcile- 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 425 

able to their own pre-established opinions. Of this number 
probably was Lord Shaftesbury, and, perhaps, the learned 
historian in whose English pages Julian appears with so much 
advantage. 

The men of this stamp will not receive Christianity as the 
only way of restitution for a helpless and fallen creature. It 
is not because they look upon the Deity as dishonoured by 
the scandal of the crucifixion, as might be the suggestion of a 
spurious sensibility, or a pious prejudice, but because they 
deem humanity to be unduly degraded by the supposed neces- 
sity for such a process of profound humiliation, that they refuse 
to bow to the mystery. But mystery it is, and must remain, 
nor is there any escape from it but by becoming involved in 
difficulties still more perplexing. Man may reason upon and 
about it, but he will only reason himself into confusion. 
Happily he is not called to struggle with that which is con- 
trary to, but to acquiesce in that which is above his reason ; 
and if the mind will not acquiesce, but will be wise above what 
is revealed, it must pay both its health and its wealth as the 
price of its unsanctified knowledge : nor will that idol release 
its hold upon its votaries until the renewed heart shall re- 
nounce its inheritance of pride, and the lords of that infected 
patrimony shall throw down their muniments at the foot of 
the cross. 

Libanius was born at Antioch in the year b.c. 314, and ac- 
cording to Suidas, his father's name was Phasganius. We learn 
from his life of himself, which he says he wrote when he was 
sixty, that he attained his fiftieth year under Jovian, and his 
fifty-seventh under Valens. His grandfathers, on both sides, 
are said to have been persons equally distinguished by their 
rank and eloquence. His paternal grandfather, together with 
his brother Brasidas, was put to death by Diocletian, in the year 
303. He was the second of three sons. From Antioch, where 
he began his studies, he went to Athens, and resided there for 
more than four years, and then proceeded to Constantinople, 
where he got in favour with Nicocles, a celebrated grammarian 
of Lacedamion, who was a teacher of the Emperor Julian. 



420 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

Returning to Athens, he was soon eminent at that resort of 
professors and students in rhetoric and philosophy. Here, 
however, he became the object of so much rivalry and oppo- 
sition, that he found it expedient to leave the city, and to re- 
pair to Nicomedia, where his excellence in speaking became 
the theme of universal praise, and where he delivered those 
lectures and orations, which attracted the notice and approba- 
tion of the Emperor Julian. It was here that he formed a 
friendship with Aristsenetus, and the five years passed by him 
in this city, which was at this time considered as the Athens 
of Bithynia, he called the e spring time of his life.' His 
friend Aristrenetus, who was Prsefect of Bithynia, lost his life 
in the ruin caused by an earthquake, which happened at Nico- 
media in the year 358. 23 He once more visited Constantino- 



23 The city of Nicomedia was called by Pliny ' a famous and beautiful city,' 
and by Ammianus ' the mother of all the cities of Bithynia/ and here the 
Roman Emperors resided when the affairs of the empire called them into the 
East. The great Constantine made Nicomedia his residence after he had re- 
tired from Rome, until Byzantium was completed for his reception. It is now 
a small village. Ammianus gives a dreadful representation of the fury and 
devastation of this earthquake, which buried the city in ruins. The carnage 
was frightful. Multitudes were crushed by the falling rafters, some were 
partially buried in the heaps of ashes, and a great many were shut in by the 
masses of timber and tiles, and died by famine. Aristsenetus, the prsefect, 
perished by a lingering and excruciating death. The epistles of Aristsenetus 
are preserved, but they are of no great value. They are stuffed with passages 
from Plato, Lucian, and other writers, and as far as they may be called his 
own, they do no honour to his powers or his principles. They are little else 
than amorous puerilities. 

Libanius mentions two monodies, (mournful songs, so called, because recited 
by one only on the stage, without the chorus,) which he wrote on occasion of 
this calamity, one relating to the city, and the other, it is presumed, to Aris- 
trenetus, the prsefect, the first of which only remains. These productions are 
worthy only of being perused as specimens of the prevailing eloquence of the 
period to which our attention is now drawn. After a pompous description of 
the magnificence of Nicomedia, he calls the gods severely to account for suffer- 
ing it to be thus destroyed. "After we had passed/' says the mourning poet, 
" through the windings of the hills, when the city appeared at the distance of 
150 stadia, on all other subjects a profound silence ensued, and, no longer 
engaged either by the towering branches of the gardens, or by the fruitfulness 
of the soil, or by the traffic of the sea, our whole conversation turned on Nico- 



TO THE TIME OF LIBAN1US. 427 

pie, but again returned to Antioch, by permission of Gallus, 
Caesar, for four months. Gallus being put to death, he finally 
fixed his residence at that city, and rose to the highest dis- 
tinction as a sophist and rhetorician. He was much hon- 
oured by Julian, who gave him the honorary title of Quaestor, 
and wrote many letters to him, six of which are now only ex- 
tant. He lived to an advanced age, and though sometimes 
the object of oppression and injurious treatment, of which he 
complains in his life of himself, was frequently very ser- 



media. The form of the city so fascinating by its beauty, tyrannized over our 
eyes, and fixed their whole attention on itself. Similar were the sensations of 
him who had never seen it before, and of him who had grown old within its 
walls. One showed to his companion the palace, glittering over the bay ; ano- 
ther the theatre embellishing the whole city. Revering it as a sacred city, we 
proceeded on our way to Chalcedon. It was necessary to make a turn, till the 
nature of the road deprived us of the spectacle. This seemed like the cessation 
of a feast. A city so great, so renowned, ought not the whole choir of the gods 
to have surrounded, and protected, exhorting each other to decree, that it should 
never be subjected to any calamity ? But now some of you have deceived, 
others have deserted, and none have assisted her. All that I have enumerated 
once were, but no longer are. What a beautiful lock has fortune severed from 
the world ! How has she blinded the other continent by thus depriving it of 
its illustrious eye ! What a deplorable deformity has she inflicted upon 
Asia ! * * * * The day had almost advanced to noon. The tutelar deities 
of the city abandoned the temples, she was left like a ship deserted by its 
crew. The lord of the trident shook the earth, and convulsed the ocean; the 
foundations of the city were disunited ; walls were thrown on walls ; pillars 
on pillars ; and roofs fell headlong. What had been hidden was revealed, and 
what had appeared was hidden. Statues perfect in beauty, and complete in 
every part, were blended by the concussion in one confused mass. Artificers, 
working at their trades, were dashed out of their shops and houses. The 
theatre involved in ruins all that were in it. * * * * O all-seeing sun, what 
were thy sensations on seeing this ? Why didst thou not prevent such a city 
from leaving the earth ? For the oxen profaned by the famished mariners, 
thy resentment was such as to threaten the celestial powers that thou wouldst 
give thyself up to Pluto, (Horn. Odyss. xii.)but for the glory of the earth, for 
the labour of many kings, for this fruit of prodigious cost, destroyed in the day- 
time, thou hast had no compassion.^ It is probable this was the usual strain 
of the eloquence of this celebrated sophist, and of the rhetoric by which the 
students and candidates for literary laurels and academical preferment in this 
doting age of Rome, were captivated. Libanius was the master spirit of that 
period. 



428 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

viceable to the city of Antioch in reconciling to them the 
emperors Julian and Theodosius. It has been inferred from 
some of his works, that he was in existence in the reign of 
Arcadius. His writings, which have been preserved, are very 
numerous. We have orations composed and delivered by 
him, and some disputations and declamations, not made to be 
spoken in public. Of his epistles, doubtless, a great number 
are still undiscovered, but very many remain, and in this 
kind of composition, he was thought by his contemporaries 
greatly to excel. 24 I have in another place alluded to the 
opinion of Gibbon, concerning the worth of these epistles. 

The epistle of Libanius to the Emperor Julian, in behalf of 
one of his friends, is pleasingly written, and indicates a mutual 
confidence very creditable to both parties to the correspon- 
dence. 

LIBANIUS TO JULIAN. 

We have made a mutual agreement that I should write to 
you in behalf of my friends, and that if their requests are rea- 
sonable, you will assist them. Of this promised assistance 
let Hyperechius first reap the advantage. He has long been 
harassed and oppressed by those whose chief study is un- 
just gain. He was one of my scholars in my former pros- 
perity. Such I deem the time of my residence at Nicomedia ; 
not on account of the wealth, but of the excellent friends, that 
it procured me, many of whom are no more. This man, whose 
hopes now rest on you, then came from Ancyra. In eloquence 
none excelled him ; in manners none equalled him. I love 

24 John Christopher Wolfius, assisted by the collections of John Frederick 
Rostgaard, a Danish nobleman, published at Hamburgh, in one volume, folio, 
1738, 1605 epistles of Libanius, Greek and Latin, from various MSS. with 
notes; to which were added 522, collected in Greece, about the middle of the 
fifteenth century, by Francis Zambicari, of Bologna; and published in his 
Latin translation only by John Somerfield, at Cracowen, 1504. It has been 
suggested by Woltius, at least, as a point worthy of consideration, that Libanius 
might have been the fabricator of the epistles of Phalaris. He states himself 
to have frequently compared the phrases and expressions of Phalaris with 
those of Libanius. Bentley, however, has no such conjecture. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 429 

him, therefore, with a parental affection. I cannot see him 
injured without assisting him myself, and urging others to 
assist him also. And if in this you think I act no bad part, 
show by what you do, that you approve of my conduct. 

The terms on which Libanius lived with the Emperor Julian, 
may be collected from the two following brief epistles 



JULIAN TO LIBANIUS. 



25 



You have made an adequate return to Aristophanes, 26 for his 
piety to the gods, and his affection for you, by making what 
was formerly a disgrace to him redound to his glory, not only 
in the present time, but in the time to come ; as the calumny 
of Paul, 27 and the sentence of that judge can by no means be 
compared with your orations. For such fiery proceedings 
were instantly detested, and together with their authors, are 
now extinct ; while your orations delight the true Greeks of the 
present age, and unless I am much mistaken, will also delight 
their posterity. Be assured that you have convinced me, or 
rather that you have induced me to retract my opinion of 
Aristophanes, and that I think him superior to all the allure- 
ments both of profit and pleasure. Can I refuse to concur 
with the most philosophical of orators, the greatest partisan of 
truth ? After this, perhaps, you may ask, why we have not 
placed his affairs in a more prosperous state, and removed 
every inconvenience attending his disgrace. When two their 
efforts join, 28 &c. You and I will confer together. For you 
are worthy to be consulted, not only as to the propriety of as- 
sisting a man who devoutly honours the gods, but also in what 

25 l&Xiavog AvroKpar<i)p Aitavicj to) So^itj; xapeiv. 

26 A Corinthian, in defence of whom, there is an oration of Libanius in the 
second volume of Morell's edition. 

27 This Paul has been stigmatised by Julian, as a notorious slanderer in 
the preceding reign of Constantius. He was burned alive soon after the ac- 
cession of Julian. He had pleaded for the informers against Aristophanes, 
before Constantius. It seems from the oration of Libanius, that Aristophanes 
was cruelly beaten with thongs having leaden bullets at the end of them. 

28 Suv te dv' £px°J Ll£vw > K> T - ^« Iliad, xi. 224. 






430 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

manner ; of which, indeed, you have given some hints. But 
of these matters it will be better, perhaps, to discourse than to 
write. Farewell, my most dear and beloved brother. 

LIBANIUS TO JULIAN. 

Alas ! alas ! how insatiable is your desire of farther attain- 
ments ! You possess the palm of eloquence, snatched from 
others ; at once 

A matchless prince, and a most potent sage. 2g 

Other princes have acted, and we applauded, but you excel in 
both these capacities. For how can we speak so highly of 
your actions, as you do of that short composition ? Hence I 
conjecture what you will do, when you have subdued Phoeni- 
cia : 30 as already you administer justice to your subjects, wage 
war with the Barbarians, and in the composition of orations 
far surpass others. Though I am not solicitous as to the 
future, I shall be as much pleased with this defeat as with a 
victory. For when the vanquished and the victor are friends, 
the vanquished participates in the triumph ; as friends, it is 
said, have all things in common. 



In this letter-writing period, we have also the epistolary 
compositions of Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, both men of 
great intellects, and true devotional spirits. Basil, whose learn- 
ing and piety gained him the title of Great, derived his descent 
from an ancient and honourable race, both on his father's 
and mother's side. His birth-place was Neocsesarea, a city of 
Pontus, or Cappadocia Pontica, where he was educated by 
his parents, and where he spent a considerable part of his life. 
Under the Maximinian persecution, one of the last and hottest 
of the efforts of declining paganism, his paternal ancestors 
fled to one of the woody mountains of Pontus, where they en- 

29 Ap%wv r' ayaOog, Kparepog rs ootyi'zriQ, alluding to the line in Homer's 
Iliad. A[X(porepov f3acn\evg r ayaOog, tcparepog r ai\[Lt]T7\g. II. iii. 178. 
80 Perhaps the orators of Phoenicia. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 431 

dured great privations. Basil owed much of his education 
to his mother Emmelia and his grandmother Macrina, which 
he acknowledges with gratitude in more than one of his epis- 
tles. He studied at Antioch under Libanius, and from Antioch 
he proceeded to Csesarea in Palestine, then famous for its 
schools of learning, and where he soon surpassed all his fellow- 
students. From Csesarea he removed to Constantinople, and, 
after studying there under eminent professors, he repaired to 
Athens, where he met again his former friend and school- 
fellow, Gregory of Nazianzus, with whom a cordial and affec- 
tionate intimacy here commenced, which continued to the end 
of their lives. He pursued his studies here with the assistance 
of Himerius and Proseresius, two of the celebrated orators 
and sophists at that time in Athens ; both high in the esteem 
and favour of the Emperor Julian. The latter, an Armenian, 
had all the youth of Cappadocia and Bithynia for his scholars, 
and was honoured with a statue of brass at Rome. From 
Athens, Basil returned to Antioch, and here put the last 
polish to his preparative studies under Libanius, with whom he 
formed an intimacy which produced a frequent interchange of 
letters between them. Here he practised oratory and pleaded 
at the forum with great applause; but soon grew weary 
of these pursuits, and betook himself wholly and finally to 
the study of the Holy Scriptures, and the expositions of theo- 
logians, especially those of Origen. After some time spent in 
these avocations, he set out on his further travels. At Alex* 
andria, in Egypt, he conversed much with monks and hermits, 
whose strict and devoted lives he much admired, and after- 
wards copied. Having finished his travels in Syria, Egypt, 
and Mesopotamia, he settled, for some time, at Csesarea. 31 
But having some disagreement with Eusebius, bishop of 
Csesarea, he retired to a sequestered place near Neocsesarea. 

31 The Emperor Julian had been a fellow student of Basil's at Athens, and 
is said to have written a letter to him while at Ceesarea, to invite him to his 
court, to which invitation he returned a refusal. It is probable that in this cor- 
respondence they debated on some points of religion, which might have drawn 
from Julian this magisterial censure. Aveyvbiv, tyvuv, Kareyviov. What you 
have written I have read, considered, and condemned. To which Basil re- 



432 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

Being unable to settle there in quiet, he sought a deeper re- 
tirement in the mountainous parts of Pontus, near the river 
Iris, and invited Nazianzen to come to him there, who came 
accordingly to him, but not till he had answered his invitation 
by several very facetious and playful letters. Here Basil be- 
came enamoured of the monastic life, and drew up, in concert 
with Gregory, many rules for the conduct of these institutions, 
which were adopted throughout the Eastern Church. After 
the death of Eusebius he was made bishop of Csesarea, and, 
there, after much ill-treatment, from the Emperor Valens, and 
others, and enduring many calumnies and persecutions, he 
ended his memorable life in the year 379. 

As examples of the merit of Basil in this species of writing, 
the following are deserving of attention. 

BASIL TO LIBANIUS. 

I am ashamed to send you our Cappadocian youths one by 
one, instead of at once inducing all who are old enough to 
profit by sound discipline, and instruction in rhetoric and 
polite learning, to resort to you as the master and guide of 
their studies. But as it is impossible to pick out at once all 
who understand their own best interests, and what most be- 
comes them, I must dispatch them to you one at a time, as I 
find them, considering that I am conferring a favour upon 
them, not unlike that which those bestow upon the thirsty 

torted, Avtyvojg, gvk tyvojg, ei yap eyug, ovk av Kanyvwg. You have read, 
but not understood, for had you understood, you would not have condemned. 
The fragment of an epistle to Julian, extant in the acts of the second Nicene 
council, wherein Basil gives the Emperor a brief account of his faith, contains an 
express acknowledgment of the invocation of saints, and the worship of images ; 
but both the phrase and matter were so contrary to Basil's genuine style and 
doctrine, as to proclaim it a counterfeit. No passage to such an effect was 
ever, by any Greek writer, imputed to Basil, nor was ever heard of till Pope 
Adrian, (the great patron of image-worship,) in a letter, brought it by his 
Legates to the said Synod. None of the fathers seem to have been more ruled 
and circumscribed in his opinions by the word and authority of the Holy 
Scriptures, than Basil. He had, however, some peculiar notions. 



TO THE TIME OF LIJBANIUS. 433 

who conduct them to the pure fountains. He who now comes 
to you will, in a little time, be respected and sought after for 
his own sake, when he shall have had the advantage of your 
instructions ; but his present importance is borrowed from his 
father, a man of the highest repute among us for his integrity 
in private life, and his prudence in state affairs. He has 
honoured me personally with the most exalted proofs of his 
attachment, in return for which I do this present kindness to 
his son, in introducing him to your acquaintance, — an act 
of which they who know and feel what is most honourable 
and excellent in character, will be the best qualified to under- 
stand the value. 



BASIL TO LIBANIUS. 

What is not within the compass of a sophist to achieve by 
his art ; whose art it professedly is to reduce to littleness 
what is lofty when it pleases him, and to give importance to 
little things when such is his object; of which two-fold talent 
you have given a conspicuous proof in your correspondence 
with me ; for that poor specimen of an epistle which I last 
wrote to you, (for such to you, who cultivate with so much 
pains and success the graces of composition, it must appear,) 
and which was, in truth, not a whit more bearable than that 
which you now receive from me, you have so magnified by 
your description of it, as to make it seem as if your own talent 
was inferior to mine in letter-writing. Your dealing; with me 
is like that of kind fathers in their games and sports with 
their children, who, for the sake of encouraging in them a 
spirit of emulation and thirst for superiority, suffer them, by 
an innocent deceit, to be victorious. In truth, I cannot ex- 
press in adequate terms the gratification you afford me by 
this flattering illusion ; which is just as if Milo or Polydamas 
were to decline contending with me in the contest of the 
Palaestra or Pancratium. 



F F 



434 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 



LIBAN1US TO BASIL. 

If you had studied for a long time in what manner you could 
best vindicate the correctness of what my letters have said 
in praise of yours, you could not have more effectually ac- 
complished your object than by writing as you have just now 
done to me. You give me the title of sophist, which title 
belongs to one who must be capable of handling his subjects 
so as to make small things great, and great things small ; and 
you affirm, that it has been my object to represent as elegant 
your former inelegant epistle, which was, in truth, not a whit 
better than that which you had just sent me; in a word, 
you contend that you are utterly incapable of writing w 7 ell ; 
that the books professing to give instruction in that art, do 
not convey it ; and that what had formerly been imparted to 
you on that subject had entirely slipped out of your memory. 
But in making out this case, you have pronounced sen- 
tence against yourself in terms so elegant, that those who 
have been present at the perusal of them felt themselves, as 
it were, fixed to the spot till they were finished. While you 
are endeavouring to disparage your former letter, by saying 
that it is like the last you wrote to me, you are not aware that 
you are pronouncing its eulogy. I cannot, therefore, help 
admiring your simplicity in this respect ; for, to accredit your 
statement, you ought to have written another kind of letter 
than that which you have last written : but to gain credence 
to an untruth would not have been consistent with your cha- 
racter and habits ; and you certainly would have practised a 
species of fraud if you had done violence to your excellent 
taste and judgment by writing ineloquently or defectively, or 
neglected to put in use those powers with which you are fur- 
nished. And, indeed, had you never exercised your ingenuity 
in disparaging what is really commendable, to avoid being- 
classed among the sophists, your genius would not have shown 
itself in all the variety of its powers. I do not find fault with 
you for the pleasure you take in the perusal of books which 



TO THE TIME OF LI BAN! US. 435 

possess substantial merit without the recommendation of an 
elegant diction. But, do what you will, the rules of compo- 
sition which you have heard from me, and which your own 
taste has completed, are fixed, and will remain fixed in your 
mind as long as you draw your breath ; nor will they ever 
cease to flourish there, even though you should cease to cul- 
tivate them. 



The letters between Basil and Libanius are many of them 
in a light complimentary strain, and composed in the modern 
fashion of playful reciprocity, as in the following specimens. 



LIBANIUS TO BASIL. 

You have not, it seems, laid aside your indignation, so that I 
hold my pen in a trembling hand. If you have forgiven me, 
why not write, to me? If you retain your angry feeling to- 
wards me, which is a supposition not to be entertained of any 
wise man, and least of you, how, when you remind others, in 
your sermons, of the scriptural precept, not to let the sun 
go down upon your wrath, can you preserve yours through 
the rising and setting of many suns? You are bent upon 
punishing me, and you effect your purpose well by depriving 
me of that intercourse which is so pleasing to me. But do 
not so deal with me, my generous friend ; be more benevolent, 
and permit me still to enjoy the golden products of your 
erudite tongue. 

BASIL TO LIBANIUS. 

Those who take pleasure in the beauty of the rose are said 
not to be offended with its thorns from which the flowers 
spring into life. And I have heard from one speaking on this 
subject, either jestingly or seriously, that nature has made 
the case of the rose resemble that of lovers as to the stimulus 
given to the affections by the infliction of a certain degree of. 



436 FROM THE TIME OF FHTLOSTRATUS 

gentle pain. But why do I borrow this illustration from the 
rose? You will find the answer to this question in your own 
writings. They sometimes pierce me with reproaches and ac- 
cusations, but the pain they produce, like that of the prickles 
of the rose's stem, cause within me a certain sense of delight, 
and excite in my bosom more ardent emotions of friendship. 

LIBANIUS TO BASIL. 

If such things proceed from your tongue when it moves 
without effort, what may not be expected from it when it is 
in full and vigorous exercise ; for what rivers can be compared 
to that copious eloquence that issues from your mouth. But 
as to myself, without daily supplies the source is dry, and my 
refuge is in silence. 

BASIL TO LIBANIUS. 

That I do not cultivate a more frequent commerce with your 
stored and communicative mind is to be imputed to a conscious 
timidity ; but that you should be so resolutely silent, is a fact 
not admitting of apology. If you continue to shew yourself 
so reluctant to correspond with me, will it not be considered 
as a mark of the indifference with which you regard me. He 
who has so ready an elocution must have equal ease in ex- 
pressing himself on paper. If the possessor of such talents 
is silent, it can only be a consequence of his pride or forget- 
fulness. You shall, however, be assailed by my letters in 
revenge for your taciturnity. For the present, farewell, my 
honoured friend. Write when it pleases you ; or, rather than 
do what is disagreeable to you, write not at all. 

SAME TO SAME. 

All those by whom I am at present surrounded speak with 
the highest admiration of the excellence of your last achieve- 
ment in oratory. They declare it to have been a splendid speci- 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 437 

men. It was something so magnificent, they say, that all men 
run together to hear it, so that it seemed as if there were none in 
the city but the speaking Libanius and the listening crowd. 
No one could bear to be absent from the scene, neither magis- 
trates, nor military men, nor artificers. Even women hastened 
to the forum to witness the display. What, then, was the 
exhibition that drew together such a crowd, and engrossed the 
whole attention of the public ? It was an oratory characterized 
rather by a correctness of style than ambitious elevation ; 
which, in short, has been so admired and extolled that I must 
beg you to send it to me without delay, that I may join my 
voice to this universal chorus of praise ; for if Libanius is 
with me an object of admiration, independently of this his 
great performance, what will be my rapture when I have in 
my hands this fresh proof of his excellence. 

The correspondence between these persons, so distinguished 
in their day, is an example decisive of the credit and import- 
ance which the composition of letters had reached at the 
period in which it took place. The interchange of eulogy by 
which the letters between them were characterized, exhibit a 
taste and spirit which we cannot altogether admire, though 
Basil, deservedly called great, on other accounts, was a party 
to the correspondence. It took place at an early period of 
Basil's life, soon after his emerging from the tuition of the 
great sophist ; and it was, probably, the want of a real cor- 
respondence in their minds that made their letters require the 
support of a traffic in compliment. 

BASIL TO HIS FRIEND GREGORY. 

Though my brother wrote to me to say that you had been 
long wishing to see me, and had purposed so to do, yet my 
frequent disappointments having made me very distrustful of 
these promises, and being, besides, harassed by many distract- 
ing occupations, it became impossible for me to remain in 
suspense any longer. I must now bend my course towards 



438 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

Pontus, where, if God permit, I hope shortly to bring my 
wanderings to an end. Having, not without some struggle, 
dismissed the delusive hopes which I had fixed on you, for 
which " waking dreams " were perhaps a better term, I set out 
on my journey to Pontus in search of the sort of life I had 
proposed to myself. On my way thither, God shewed me a 
place just such as I was in want of; so that the vision with 
which we were wont so often to amuse ourselves in our playful 
moods and vacant hours, and which has so often been pic- 
tured on our imaginations, has been at length realized. It is 
a hill covered with a thick grove, having its base on the north 
washed with cold transparent streams. A plain lies stretched 
out beneath it, kept in perpetual verdure by the mountain tor- 
rents. The fields are encircled and fenced in by a wood of 
spontaneous growth, with every variety of trees. Calypso's 
island itself would suffer by a comparison with this place, 
vaunted as it was by Homer for its unrivalled beauty. And, 
indeed, the place I am describing may be considered as a sort 
of island, being cut off from the country about it by this natural 
rampart ; on two sides of which runs a deep ravine. On one 
side of this, the river replenished by the upland springs, forms 
a perpetual barrier to keep out intrusion. On the other side, 
the projection of the hill forms a curvature like the crescent 
moon, which, in conjunction with the ravines, completes on 
that side also the natural fortification ; and through it there 
is one only avenue to the mountain, of which we may be said 
to be masters. The site of the dwelling-house is another crag 
jutting out from the top of the hill, from which the eye com- 
mands the whole expanse of country, with its fine circumfluent 
river, not inferior, in my opinion, to the river Strymon, in beau- 
tiful effect, as viewed from the city of Amphipolis. The Stry- 
mon flows so leisurely on, that it seems more like a lake than 
a river; while this, of all the rivers I know, is the rapidest in 
its course. It dashes against the rocky base, and from thence 
rebounding is rolled round into the deep vortex below. 32 Our 

32 E(£ Sivrjv fiaQuav TrepieiXeirai. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 439 

river turns towards me the loveliest aspect imaginable ; while 
to the dwellers in the vicinity, it is of substantial utility, as it 
nourishes in its foamy current a surprising quantity of fish. 

Why should I dwell upon the fragrant airs that sweep along 
these verdant lawns, or the breezes that visit us from the 
river? It is for others to admire the profusion of the flowers 
and the music of the singing birds, but for me there is hardly 
leisure to recreate myself with these delights ; and if I add, 
by way of completing the picture, to the other advantages of 
the situation, its favourable position for the production of 
every sort of fruit, let me at the same time especially remark, 
that it affords to myself what is of more value than all the 
fruits in the world, — tranquillity, not only by its distance from 
the city, with its strife and noise, but because it is so seques- 
tered that no traveller visits it, save those who are in search of 
game. You have your bears and wolves, but we know of no 
other herds but those of deer, and hares, and mountain goats. 
Do you not think, after having this description of my sojourn, 
that I should be most unwise to exchange it for a place of 
peril like that sink of the world, Tiberene. You will surely 
pardon my haste to return to the place I have been describing. 
Thus Alcmseon, when he had found EchinadaB, would no longer 
bear to be a wanderer. 



The following letter, written by Basil when in the solitudes 
of Cassarea, to his. friend Gregory, will shew what this great 
father of the church considered to be the course of life most 
agreeable to the spirit of the gospel, and most suitable to the 
Christian vocation. 



BASIL TO GREGORY. 



33 



I kn ew again your letter as men discover the children of their 
friends, by the likeness they bear to their parents ; for when 

33 I cannot refuse myself the gratification of contrasting with this letter of the 
great Basil, a portion of a letter of the late Rev. John Newton, leaving the 
reader to decide between the opposite views of these very different persons, 



440 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

I find you saying that my description of my abode excited in 
you no desire to come and live as I do, before you were made 



and to say whether the portraiture from the hand of the plain pastor of the 
parish of Saint Mary Woolnoth, or that which is above produced from the 
great Christian guide of the fourth century, which some consider as the most 
flourishing state of the Christian church, is most entitled to be copied by the 
humble and devout Christian. 

DEAR SIR, 

In the passage alluded to, Romans xii. 2, I suppose the Apostle means the 
men of the world, in distinction from believers; these not having the love of 
God in their hearts, or his fear before their eyes, are of course engaged in such 
pursuits and practices as are inconsistent with our holy calling, and which 
we cannot imitate or comply with, without hurting our peace and profession. 
We are, therefore, bound to avoid conformity to them in all such instances; 
but we are not obliged to decline all intercourse with the world, or to impose 
restraints upon ourselves when the Scripture does not restrain us, in order to 
make ourselves as unlike the world as possible. To instance in a few particu- 
lars : It is not necessary, perhaps it is not lawful, wholly to renounce the 
society of the world. A mistake of this kind took place in the early ages of 
Christianity, and men (at first perhaps with a sincere desire of serving God 
without distraction) withdrew into deserts and uninhabited places, and wasted 
their lives at a distance from their fellow-creatures. But unless we could flee 
from ourselves likewise, this would afford us no advantage : so long as we 
carry our own hearts with us we shall be exposed to temptation, go where we 
will. Besides, this would be thwarting the end of our vocation. Christians 
are to be the salt and the light of the world, conspicuous as cities set upon a 
hill : they are commanded to " let their light shine before men, that they, be- 
holding their good works, may glorify their Father who is in heaven." This 
injudicious deviation from the paths of Nature and Providence, gave occasion 
at length to the vilest abominations ; men who withdrew from the world under 
the pretence of retirement, became the more wicked and abandoned as they 
lived more out of public view and observation. 

Diligence and fidelity in the management of temporal concerns, though 
observable in the practice of many worldly men, may be maintained without a 
sinful conformity to the world. Neither are we required to refuse a moderate 
use of the comforts and conveniences of life, suitable to the station to which 
God has appointed us in this world. The spirit of self-righteousness and will- 
worship works much in this way, and supposes that there is something excel- 
lent in long fastings, in abstaining from pleasant food, in wearing meaner 
clothes than is customary with those in the same rank of life, and in many 
other austerities and singularities not commanded by the word of God. And 
many persons who are in the main sincere, are grievously burthened with 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 441 

acquainted with my habits and way of living, I recognized 
that character of your mind, which reckons all things here as 
nothing worth in comparison with that blessedness which is 



scruples respecting the use of lawful things. It is true there is need of a 
constant watch, lest what is lawful in itself become hurtful to us by its abuse. 
But this outward strictness may be carried to a great length, without a spark 

of true grace, and even without the knowledge of the true God A 

man may starve his body to feed his pride: but to those who fear and serve 
the Lord, " every creature is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received 
with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer." Not- 
withstanding these limitations, the precept is very extensive and important, 
" Be not conformed to the world." As believers, we are strangers and pilgrims 

in the world. Heaven is our country, and the Lord is our King 

We must not conform to the spirit of the world. As members of society we 
have a part to act in it in common with others. But if our business is the 
same, our principles and ends are to be entirely different. Diligence in our 
respective callings is, as I have already observed, commendable, and our duty ; 
but not with the same views which stimulate the activity of the men of the 
world. A Christian is to pursue his lawful calling with an eye to the provi- 
dence of God, and with submission to His wisdom. 

We must not conform to the maxims of the world. The world, in various 
instances, calls evil good, and good evil. We are to have recourse to the law 
and the testimony, and to judge of things by the unerring word of God, unin- 
fluenced by the determination of the great, or the many. We are to obey 
God rather than man, though upon this account we may expect to be despised 
or reviled, and to be made a gazing-stock or a laughing-stock to those who set 
his authority at defiance. We must bear our testimony to the truth as it is in 
Jesus, avow the cause of his despised people, and walk in the practice of 
universal obedience, patiently endure reproaches, and labour to overcome evil 
with good. Thus we shall shew that we are not ashamed of him ; and there is 
an hour coming when he will not be ashamed of us, who have followed him, 
in the midst of a perverse generation ; but will own our worthless names before 

the assembled world It is our duty to redeem time, to walk with 

God, to do all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to follow the 
example which he has set us when he was upon earth, and to work out our 
salvation with fear and trembling. It must, of course, be our duty to avoid a 
conformity with the world in those vain and sensual diversions, which stand 
in as direct contradiction to a spiritual frame of mind, as darkness to light." 

Though in comparing these manuals of Christian duty, I cannot but greatly 
prefer, as a whole, the sound sense and moderation which characterise Mr. 
Newton's piety, and practical divinity, I am far, very far, from disputing the 
claim of many of the great Basil's precepts to the homage and admiration of 
the humble believer. 



442 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTUATUS 

laid up for us in promises. I blush, however, to relate to 
you what I myself am doing day and night in this sequestered 
nook. It is true, I left my occupations in the city, as minis- 
tering occasion to unnumbered evils ; but myself I have not 
yet been able to relinquish. I resemble persons at sea, who, 
being little accustomed to a voyage, and ready to die with the 
nausea it occasions, are angry with the size of the vessel in 
which they are so tossed about, and betake themselves, there- 
fore, to the little boat or skiff. But they are still as sick and 
disordered as they were before : discomfort and disgust still 
go along with them. Something like this is my condition. 
For still carrying with me the same susceptibility, I am every- 
where attended by the like perturbations. So that I gained 
nothing very considerable from coming into this wilderness. 
But if we do what we ought, and follow in the track of Him who 
leadeth us unto salvation (for if any one, saith He, will come 
after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and 
follow me), we must do our utmost to keep the mind sedate 
and tranquil. For as the eye, which is ever rolling itself 
about, one while glancing sideways, and then again moving 
itself quickly from things above to things below, can see no- 
thing distinctly, the spectator's vision requiring to be fastened 
to its object to see it clearly and perfectly; so, whilst the 
mind of man is distracted by a thousand worldly cares, it is 
impossible he should have a distinct perception of the truth. 
If we are free from the matrimonial bonds, strong and inordi- 
nate desires, appetites, and affections agitate the mind : and 
marriage, on the other hand, brings with it a crowd of cares. 
If without children, there is the desire of children ; if a 
family, there is the care of their education. Then there is the 
protection of one's wife, the regulations of the house,, the 
ordering of the servants, losses, disputes with neighbours, 
lawsuits, the dangers of merchandize, the fatigues of hus- 
bandry. Every day brings, as it comes, some cloud of its 
own upon the soul ; and the nights, taking up the cares of the 
day, still hold the mind under the same delusions. From 
these evils there is but one escape — separation from the world 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. . 443 

entirely. But then retirement from the world is not to be out 
of oneself in relation to the body, but to have the soul detached 
from sympathy with the body, and to become cityless, house- 
less, moneyless, companionless, without possessions, without 
livelihood, without business, without society, ignorant of 
human sciences, and to have room in the heart for the lessons 
of Divine teaching. But this preparation of the heart consists 
in the unlearning of our knowledge, the fruit of evil custom, 
by which the heart has been pre-occupied. We cannot write 
upon the wax until the characters already written there have 
been previously obliterated. Nor can we fix divine doctrines 
in the soul before we have cleared out of the way what evil 
habit has previously established there. Now to the attainment 
of this end the solitude of the wilderness furnishes the greatest 
possible advantage, inasmuch as it tranquillizes the passions, 
and gives opportunity to reason to dismiss them from the 
soul. Just as the wild beasts are most easily subdued when 
they are soothed and stroked, so lusts, evil tempers, fears, 
and griefs, which are like poison to the soul, when softened 
down by quiet treatment, and not exasperated by provocation, 
are the more easily brought under by the power of reason. 
To promote those objects, the place of one's retreat must be 
such as that T have chosen, — cut off from communication 
with mankind, so that the course of spiritual exercises may be 
uninterrupted by any external objects. Pious employments 
feed the soul with divine thoughts. What happier employ- 
ment can there be than to follow the example of angels ; com- 
mencing prayer with the dawn of the day, and with hymns 
and spiritual songs honouring the Creator? Then, as the day 
advances, to resort to our employments, carrying our prayers 
everywhere about with us, and with hymns, as with salt, 
seasoning our employments. Our hymns are our solace, and 
convey to us the blessings of a cheerful and contented mind. 
Quiet is the first step towards the purification of the soul, 
when there is not a tongue to speak of the affairs of men, nor 
eyes that are under the temptation of gazing upon comely 
forms and fair complexions, When the ear enervates not the 



444 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

vigour of the soul by listening to seducing songs, or to the loose 
talk of jesters and buffoons, which is especially fraught with 
mischievous effects. For the mind, when undisturbed by out- 
ward objects, retires into itself, and, through itself, ascends to 
meditation upon God ; and being penetrated and irradiated 
by the light of that beautiful object, the man attains to a for- 
getfulness of his natural condition. Nor is his soul debased 
by the cares or concerns of food or raiment : but, enjoying 
an exemption from all earthly solicitudes, its entire energies 
are bestowed on the acquisition of eternal blessings ; — on the 
enquiry how temperance, and fortitude, may be established in 
the bosom, — how justice, and prudence, and the rest of the 
virtues, which, being under one or other of these general 
heads, teach a serious man how to rule and govern every 
action of his life. But the great guide of life is meditation 
on the inspired Scriptures. For in them are to be found 
directions for the conduct, and the lives of blessed men, there 
recorded and transmitted, are placed before us as living pic- 
tures of godly conversation and holy actions for our imita- 
tion. Whatsoever defects a man may find in himself, let 
him ponder on that book till he draws out of it, as from a 
kind of medical repository, a remedy suitable to his disease. 
Thus he who is in quest of temperance sets continually before 
him the history of Joseph, and learns from him the actions 
wherein temperance consists ; finding him not merely conti- 
nent as to pleasure, but with a mind habituated to virtue. 
Again, he learns fortitude from Job, who not only remained 
unaltered under a sad reverse of circumstances, becoming, in 
an instant, poor from being rich, and a childless man from 
having a fair family, but possessed his mind in constant con- 
tentedness; not exasperated when the friends who came to 
comfort him pressed hard upon him, and assailed him with 
invectives. If any one, again, be thinking how, in the same 
act, he may at once be meek and magnanimous, angry at sin, 
but meek towards the sinner, he will find in David the man 
of prowess in arms, but gentle, placid, and unresentful to- 
wards his private enemies. Such a man, too, was Moses, 



TO THE TIME OF LTBANIUS. 445 

rising up with a burst of indignation when men sinned against 
the Lord, but sustaining in a spirit of meekness his own ill 
usage. And as the painters of animals are always in the 
habit, when they draw from copies, of looking often to the 
original picture, and labour to transfer the spirit of their pat- 
tern to their own performance, so should he w T ho endeavours 
to perfect himself in all the characteristics of virtue, look off 
to the lives of the saints, as to a kind of moving and acting 
images, and make their good qualities their own by imitation. 
Prayer, again, succeeding to the reading of the Scriptures, 
makes the soul fresher and more vigorous ; stirring it up to a 
holy longing after God. Now that is the right sort of prayer 
which brings the notion of God vividly to the soul : and this 
is the indwelling of God, the having God seated within us by 
keeping up a constant recollection of Him. In this way we 
become the temples of God, when our habitual recollection of 
Him is uninterrupted by earthly cares, and when the mind is 
not disturbed by sudden emotions. The lover of God, shun- 
ning all these things, retreats to Him, and banishing all that 
might prompt him to inordinate affections, spends his time 
in the pursuits which lead to virtue. 

Above all things, it behoves him not to be ignorant of the 
right use of speech, but to enquire undisputatiously, and to 
answer unambitiously, not interrupting the speaker when 
making useful observations, nor seeking to thrust in one's own 
remarks for the sake of display. We must set bounds to our- 
selves both in speaking and hearing. We should never blush 
to learn, nor ever be reluctant to teach. And if we have gained 
any instruction from another, we ought not to conceal it, as 
worthless women do when they tell untruths about their 
spurious offspring, but candidly acknowledge the true father 
of our information. In the tone of our voice a medium is 
desirable ; we should take care, on the one hand, not to be 
inaudible through indistinctness, and on the other, not to 
raise the voice to such a pitch as to be offensive to our hearers ; N 
nor ever utter any thing before we have well thought it over. 
We should salute courteously the friends we meet, and make 



446 FROM THE TIME OF PHI LOSTRATUS 

ourselves agreeable to those with whom we converse; not 
seeking to amuse men by facetiousness, but adopting a kind 
and gentle way of giving our advice. In all cases where it is 
incumbent upon us to rebuke, we should avoid harshness of 
expression. You will always be more acceptable to those who 
need to be set right by you, if you begin by humbly speaking 
of your own faults. The style of reproof adopted by the 
Prophet is often desirable, who, on the occasion of David's 
sin, did not prescribe of himself the extent of punishment the 
sin deserved ; but, by introducing a fictitious character, made 
him the judge of his own sin. So that having, in the first 
instance, passed sentence on himself, he had no room after- 
wards to complain of his reprover. But the concomitants of 
a humble and dejected frame of mind should be a sad and 
cast down countenance, a neglected person, untrimmed hair, 
soiled raiment; so that what mourners do from the duty of 
relationship should appear in us a spontaneous act. 

The tunic should be bound to the body with a girdle, but 
not above the waist, for that is woman-like ; nor should it be 
so as to let the garment hang loosely, for that is slovenly. 
The pace at which we walk should not be sluggish, agreeing 
with the character of an enervated mind ; nor should it be im- 
petuous and strutting, so as to indicate a fro ward disposition. 
There should be but one object aimed at in our dress — to have a 
sufficient covering for the body, both in winter and in summer. 
In the colour of our garments we should not aim at what is 
gaudy : nor in the quality and fashion of it should we seek 
what is delicate and soft ; for to be careful about the colour 
of our dress is to act like women anxious to set themselves 
off by colours not their own, dying their cheeks and hair 
with paint. But the tunic ought to be of such a thickness 
as not to need a superaddition for the sake of greater warmth. 
The shoes should be cheap, in point of price, but answering 
sufficiently the purpose. And as in all parts of the dress we 
should consider only what is absolutely necessary, so bread 
will satisfy the hunger, and water will suffice for the thirst, 
of a man in health. Viands derived from the seeds of the 



TO THE TIME OF LJBANIUS. 447 

ground are sufficient to keep up our strength of body for all 
necessary purposes. We must refuse to gratify a voracious 
appetite ; content to keep the body under the control of tem- 
perance and moderation : and at our meals and recreations we 
should have the mind occupied with thoughts of God. We 
should make the very quality of our food, and the sustentation 
of the body which receives it, an occasion of thanksgiving. 
What various kinds of food, adapted to the peculiar structure 
of the different bodies, have been provided by the Adminis- 
trator of all things ! Let the prayers which are offered before 
meat be worthy of God's providential gifts, both those which 
He furnishes for our present use, and those which He hath 
laid up in store for our future need. Let our prayers after meat 
express our thankfulness for what has been bestowed, and our 
request for mercies still in promise. Let there be one stated 
hour for meals, regularly observed as the time comes round, and 
so passed that out of a day of twenty- fours scarcely even this 
hour should be expended on the body. The remainder is 
taken up by the ascetic in mental exercises. The sleep should 
be light, and easily disturbed, following naturally the propor- 
tion of the diet, and interrupted purposely by meditations on 
important matters. The giving way to a lethargic slumber, 
the limbs being all unstrung, so as to afford opportunity to 
unseasonable fancies, inflicts on those who thus sleep a daily 
death. But what the dawn of day is to others, the midnight 
is to those who are the ascetic followers of piety ; since the 
silence of the night presents the soul with the best leisure for 
its exercises, when neither eyes nor ears are transmitting to 
the heart any hurtful sounds or sights; but the soul, alone 
and by itself, is present with its God, and is disciplining itself 
by calling its sins to its remembrance, prescribing rules to 
itself for avoiding what is evil, and seeking God's co-operation 
for the performance of those things which it is bent upon 
fulfilling. 

Gregory, surnamed Theologus, or the divine, was born at 
Nazianzus in Cappadocia Propria, or Magna, distinguished 



c 



448 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

by being so called from Cappadocia Pontica, simply designated 
by the name of Pontus, — the son of parents greatly venerated 
for their virtues. His father sprung from heathen parents, 
abjured his errors, and became the pastoral bishop of the 
church at Nazianzus. The story of his mother's praying for 
a son, and vowing at the altar to dedicate him to the service 
of God, may or may not be true, but that she took all a 
Christian mother's pains to prepare and qualify him to labour 
efficaciously in that holy cause, is a fact which his own testi- 
mony has placed beyond doubt. 30 After an infancy passed 
in studies and occupations far above his years, he entered 
upon his travels, and having visited the resorts of studious 
men, and profited under various teachers and professors, he 
came at length to Athens, the great seat and emporium of 
literature and philosophy, and there begun the close and 
affectionate intimacy between him and Basil, which continued 
as long as they were both in existence upon the earth. Their 
studies, pursuits, and hopes were directed to the same ends, 
animated by the same motives, and cherished and cemented 
by the similarity of their tastes and attainments. After the 
departure of Basil, Gregory remained a considerable time at 
Athens, in compliance with the earnest entreaties of his fellow 
students and associates : and when some longer time had been 
spent in that city, where the study of the Scriptures was his 
chief occupation, he returned to Nazianzus, and was ordained a 
presbyter of that church by his father, whom for some time he 
assisted in his episcopal charge. While so employed he was 
persuaded by Basil to come to him in the place which he had 
chosen for his retreat in Pontus, where they framed, in con- 



30 It is worthy to be remarked how beneficial an industry Christian mothers 
put forth, in those early days, in training their children to wisdom and virtue. 
Nonna, the mother of Gregory, Eramelia, the mother of Basil, Monica, the 
mother of Augustin, and Anthusa, the mother of Chrysostom, were all, among 
others that might be added, the mothers no less of the minds, than of the bodies 
of those great men. See the Treatise of Chrysostom, Ad Viduam Juniorem, 
vol. i. s. 2, in which we have the testimony of Libanius to the honour of the 
mothers and wives of the early Christians. 



TO THE TIME OF L1BANIUS. 449 

junction, those rules for the regulation of the monastic life 
and discipline which tended greatly to bring these institutions 
into general credit and adoption in Christian states. After 
passing some time in this solitude, and in these employments 
with his friend, his duty to his aged parent, who had great 
need of his aid and support, brought him again to Nazianzus, 
where he found the Arian heresy, fostered by imperial patron- 
age, rapidly extending its influence. All his exertions were 
called for to defend the church against an error flowing into 
it with so full a tide that even his father appeared to be in 
danger of being carried away by its force. At the same time 
the Emperor Julian, having succeeded to the government of 
the Roman world, was commencing his indirect persecution 
of the Christians. Joined by Basil in this hour of extreme 
danger, his labours in the defence of truth against these 
formidable assaults, from without and within the pale of the 
church, were incessant. The exaltation of Basil to the archi- 
episcopal throne of Csesarea, in Cappadocia, while it strength- 
ened the hands of these Christian combatants, provoked the 
envy and malice of their opponents. 

The province of Ceesarea comprehended many bishoprics, 
among which Sasima was one, an unhealthy, noisy, and insigni- 
ficant town, and this unfortunately was the place of which Basil 
chose to appoint his dearest friend and companion to be the 
bishop. The account which Gibbon gives of this transaction is 
as follows. " The exaltation of Basil, from a private life to the 
archiepiscopal throne of Csesarea, discovered to the world, per- 
haps to himself, the pride of his character ; and the first favour 
which he condescended to bestow on his friend was received, and 
perhaps was intended, as a cruel insult. Instead of employing 
the superior talents of Gregory it some useful and conspicuous 
station, the haughty prelate selected, among the fifty bishoprics 
of his extensive province, the wretched village of Sasima, 31 
without water, without verdure, without society, situate at 






31 Situated at the distance of forty miles from Archilais, and thirty-two from 
Tyana. 

G G 



450 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

the junction of three highways, and frequented only by the 
incessant passage of rude and clamorous waggoners." 32 

Gregory, however, submitted, and was ordained bishop of 
Sasima, but never entered upon the episcopal functions. Again 
he repaired to Nazianzus, of which he took the government, 
in aid of his father, who had held the bishopric above five and 
forty years. His father died soon after his return, and Gregory 
remained at that place while his mother was living, on whose 
demise he went first to Seleucia, and then to Constantinople, 
in compliance with a summons received from the orthodox 
party, to stem the torrent of the various heresies by which that 
city was then infested. Here he was lodged in the house of a 
kinsman. A room was set apart for religious worship to which 
the name of Anastasia was given, to indicate the resurrection 
of the orthodox faith, and which became the scene of the 
extraordinary labours and successes of this holy man for the 
space of two anxious years. The Arian, Macedonian, and 
Apollinarian heresies were all shaken by the gigantic efforts 
and eloquence of Gregory, and the catholics were encouraged 
to look for a speedy triumph as the consequence of the bap- 
tism, and the succeeding edicts of Theodosius the Great, who, 
while Gregory was pursuing his successful course, entered 
Constantinople in triumph, and made it his first care to exalt 
to the archiepiscopal throne of Constantinople the man, whose 
missionary labours had done so much in support of the ortho- 
dox creed. But the great council of Constantinople, which 
took place immediately after this event, did not appear to 
settle Gregory securely and satisfactorily in his great office. 
After the death of Meletus, bishop of Antioch, who had at- 
tended the council, and brought with him a great accession 



32 The poem in which Gregory pours forth his sorrow caused by this event, 
is truly affecting. 

ttovoi koivoi Xoywv, 

'Ofxo^syog te kcci (rvva^iog (3iog, 

Now g tig tv aprons, 

AieaKeSa<zai Travra, tppnrraL %a/xai, 
Avpai (pepovai Tag waXaiag e\7ricag. 



TO THP; TIME OF LIBANIUS. 451 

of strength to the sound cause against the Arian heresy, the 
situation of Gregory became exposed to so much vexation and 
molestation, and so many of the bishops began a contentious 
struggle for the post to which Gregory had been elevated, that, 
in the state of infirmity to which age and long continued 
effort had reduced him, he deemed it most for his dignity and 
comfort, to leave a sojourn which afforded no prospect of tran- 
quillity, for a place sufficiently removed from ingratitude and 
contention. He retired to Arianzus, where he found the 
retreat he was in quest of, in a sequestered spot, which was 
his own by inheritance, and where he composed his celebrated 
oration on the merits of his departed friend and companion, 
the great Basil, who died about the year 379, and several 
poems, which seemed in no small degree to solace the last 
years of his life. He died in this agreeable solitude in very 
advanced age about the year 389. 



I shall preface the few epistles of Gregory hereinafter intro- 
duced with his letter to Nicobulus on the subject of good let- 
ter-writing. 

" Of those who write epistles, (since you ask for my senti- 
ments on this subject) my opinion is, that some make their 
letters too lengthy, and others far too short for the occasion. 
Both these depart from the just mean, as archers miss the 
mark, whether they shoot beyond it, or come short of it. For 
the error is the same, though it is committed in opposite 
ways. The right measure of letter-writing is the requirement 
of the subject matter. For we neither ought to be long where 
there is not much to say, nor brief where there is a press of 
matter. What then ? Is it proper to measure wisdom by the 
Persian line, or by the cubits of children, and to write so in- 
completely as to write, in fact, nothing; imitating the noon- 
tide shadows which lie immediately before us at our feet, the 
limits whereof are scarcely visible, and are rather glanced at 
than seen, and are, if I may so say, the shadows of shades. 
Whereas the right proceeding is to avoid excess in either way, 



452 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

and to adopt a middle course. Concerning the concise method 
of writing this is my opinion. 

" Concerning perspicuity this is plain, that we should avoid 
as much as possible the style of an essay, and aim rather at a 
familiar phraseology, and to say all in a few words. That is 
the best epistle, and the most happily composed, which is 
calculated to bring its matter home both to the learned and to 
the unlearned, — to the one, as being accommodated in lan- 
guage to the level of the multitude ; and to the other, as 
being raised in thought above that level ; and which is un- 
derstood as soon as read. For it is equally incongruous that 
a riddle should be plain, and that an epistle should need 
interpretation. 

" The third requisite in letter-writing is grace of expression. 
But we must avoid altogether a diction dry and harsh, and 
expressions that are coarse, inelegant, and dull ; as where 
a letter is devoid of pointed sentences, adages, and apoph- 
thegms, yes, and of jests too, and enigmatical allusions, by 
which this sort of composition is rendered pleasing. But let 
us avoid excess in the use of these things. By the want of 
them we are dull and insipid, by the adoption of them we are 
in danger of being carried too far. We should use them to 
the same extent as purple is admitted into the texture of woven 
garments. We may introduce figures, too, but these should 
be few, and not immodest. But let us cast to the sophists 
antitheses, gingling words, and balanced sentences with simi- 
lar terminations. 33 Or if we do occasionally introduce them, 

33 The opinions of this Father upon this subject are just and correct. The 
various modes of playing with words were in great estimation with the 
erudite men of Greece called Sophists, even when that term had a more dig- 
nifying import, as being descriptive of a class of men whose learning and 
labours were both dazzling and profound. The words of Gregory in designat- 
ing these arts of composition are irapiaa and ico/cwXa, which are not very easy 
to express in English without a circumlocution. Quintilian, in the ninth 
book of his treatise De Institutione Oratoria, says a good deal on this species 
of rhetorical ornament, of which he quotes many examples. He understands 
the Trapiaov to be where the passage is extremis syllabis consonans, and 
adverts to the opinion of another critic, who thinks that it is also where the 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 453 

let it be in a playful way, and not when we are treating of 
serious matters. I will end my observations on this subject 
by mentioning what I once heard from a man of wit about the 
eagle. When the birds were contending for the throne, and 
some came adorned in one way, some in another, it was his 
greatest ornament to appear before them unadorned. This 
also should be especially observed in epistles, — to be without 
the affectation of ornament, and to come as close as possible 
to nature. Thus far, in an epistle, I have sent you my senti- 
ments concerning epistles. But a subject such as this, per- 
haps, is not the province of one who ought to be engaged in 
higher matters. What else belongs to the subject you may 
search for yourself with your quickness of apprehension ; and 
those who are wise in these matters will assist your enquiries." 

GREGORY TO CELEUSIUS, THE MAGISTRATE. 

Since you upbraid me with my silence and rustic negligence, 
my elegant and polished friend, come now, let me tell you a 



passage consists of membra non dissimilia. He properly censures the frigid 
and vain affectation of using the figure, if figure it can be called, when it does 
not easily and naturally arise, but is studied, and far-fetched. It is best 
adopted, he says, when it gives spirit and vigour to the sense and meaning, 
not depending wholly upon the sound. Melius atque acrius quod cum figura 
jucundum est, turn etiam sensu valet. The laoKwXa generally represent those 
passages which consist as well of similar divisions or members, as of similar 
endings, not always accurately balanced ; and sometimes of endings not alto- 
gether alike ; while sometimes the virtue lay wholly in the endings, when, 
perhaps, the more appropriate name might be dfioioreXevrov, which might be 
also exhibited only in single words. Quintilian is very worthy of being con- 
sulted on this head, of which he treats very copiously. Cicero describes these 
artifices in these terms, " Paria paribus adjuncta, et similiter definita; item- 
que contrariis relata contraria, quae sua sponte, etiamsi id non agas, cadunt 
plerumque numerose, Gorgias primus invenit, sed his est usus intemperantius." 
Orat. n. 175. 

Gregory repudiates the too frequent use, or rather the abuse of these modes 
of aiming at effect in writing ; but it will be perceived by those who read his 
works with attention to his style, that he very frequently avails himself of them, 
though chiefly in his letters, in which, doubtless, he thought a freer use might 
be allowed of these little artifices of diction. 



454 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

fable, which is not without its wit, in the hope that by this 
means I may put some check on your loquacity. The swallows 
once ridiculed the swans for their unwillingness to hold inter- 
course with men, or to exhibit publicly their vocal powers, 
choosing rather to wear away their lives among the meadows, 
and to confine themselves to streams and deserts, where their 
voices were but rarely heard. And when you do sing, said 
they, it is all kept to yourselves, as if you were ashamed of 
your music. But we can call cities and chambers our own. 
Men are our companions, and as we fly about amongst them 
we tell them all our stories — chatting of this thing and the 
other pertaining to those ancient Attic tales about Pandion, 
about Athens, about Tereus, about Thrace, the journey, the 
affinity, the violence, the cutting out the tongue, the letter, 
and, above all, the story about Itys, and how, from being men, 
we became birds. As for the swans, they scarcely deigned 
them a reply, so disgusted were they with their gossip. But 
when they did vouchsafe an answer, it was this, " We are they 
who can make it worth a man's while to go forth into the 
desert that his ears may be regaled with the sweet sound, 
when we spread our wings out to the zephyr. If we sing not 
often, or in public, this is the fact most to our credit, inasmuch 
as we manage our voices like philosophers, and are careful 
not to mix our melody with the uproar of the multitude. But, 
as for you, though you affect'to save them the trouble of seek- 
ing you by visiting their houses, men turn away from your 
songs with disgust; and, indeed, most justly so, since you 
cannot hold your peace even after having lost your tongues ; 
but, in lamenting this deprivation, and the calamity that has 
befallen you, do you not, in fact, exercise your voices more 
than the sweetest and the most melodious songsters V Under- 
stand my meaning, says Pindar, and if you find my tacitur- 
nity better than your loquacity, cease to taunt us, as you do, 
for keeping silence. Or else I shall address to you that pro- 
verb, which is most true and pithy, ' The swans will sing when 
the daws shall hold their peace.' 



TO THE TIME OF LIJ3ANIUS. 455 



GREGORY TO NICOBULUS. 34 

As I have always given the great Basil precedency to myself, 
though he thinks I should not, so in this instance I give him 
the precedency, not less for the sake of truth than of friend- 
ship. Therefore placing his epistles foremost, I subjoin my 
own. For it is my wish that on all occasions we should be 
yoked together ; and at the same time, by this self-postpone- 
ment, I am furnishing a pattern to others of moderation and 
humility. 

TO THE SAME. 

To write laconically is not, as you suppose, to make use of 
few syllables, but in few syllables to express much; thus I 
call even Homer a very brief writer, and Antimachus 35 prolix. 
Why so? because I measure length by the matter, and not 
by the words. 

GREGORY TO BASIL. 

My compliance with your request depends partly, indeed, 
upon myself, but partly, and I think still more, upon your 
piety. I can furnish, on my part, readiness and alacrity. 
(For never have I declined your company, but, on the contrary, 
have always sought for it, and now I more particularly long 
for it.) But you must help to set me clear from my present 
embarrassment. For I am now in attendance upon the lady, 
my mother, who has been for a long time in a declining state 

34 Nicobulus had requested Gregory to furnish him with a selection of his 
letters. 

35 It may be collected from iElius Spartianus, that Antimachus was a very 
obscure poet. He was a favourite author with the Emperor Hadrian, who would 
have substituted him in the schools for Homer. Antimachus Colophonius, 
poeta Graecus, qui auditoribus suis (cum poema obscurum quoddam recitaret) 
se deserentibus, solo vero Platone manente, dixit, Plato unus instar mihi om- 
nium est. See Fabri Thesaurus. At populus tumido gaudeat Antimacho. 
Catull. Carm. 93, 10. 



456 FROM THE TIME OF PHTLOSTRATUS 

of health ; and if I could endure to leave her in this precarious 
state, be well assured I would not rob myself of your society. 
You have only to promote, by your prayers, her restoration, 
and my journey. 

TO THE SAME. 

I confess I have proved unfaithful to my promise to be with 
you, and to carry on our philosophical pursuits together; 
having agreed with you so to do, even from the time we were 
at Athens, when we were united in close friendship, and grow- 
ing together 36 (for I know no more appropriate expression). 
I have not willingly disappointed you, but it is the case of 
one law superseding another, viz. the law that obliges us to 
minister to parents superseding that of companionship and 
friendship. But I shall not altogether break my promise if you 
will accede to this proposal, for then I shall be with you, and 
you with me. My proposition is this, Agree that all things 
shall be common between us, and that our friendship shall 
look to the same objects of reverence; then this will be the 
effect, that I shall avoid giving sorrow to my parents, and have 
you, in a manner, with me. 

TO THE SAME. 

I cannot bear to be taunted with my Tiberina, 37 and with 
its frosts and wintry storms, and with being obliged to walk 
upon tip-toe, and to tread upon planks, by you that are so 
free from mud, so winged and buoyant, and borne along with 
the arrow of Abaris; 38 so that, Cappadocian as you are, you 

36 sk rwv A9t]vq)v etc kcli Tt}Q eiceioe QiXicLQ teat (TvfMpv'iac. See a similar 
expression, which was probably in the mind of Gregory, in Rom. vi. 5, Ei yap 
<rv/j,(pvToi ysyovafxev, k. t. X. " For if we have been planted together in the 
likeness," &c. 

37 Tiberina was a region of Cappadocia, in which was Arianzus, the birth- 
place of Gregory. 

38 A Scythian, presented with an arrow by Apollo, which as soon as he 
sent from the string he was borne along with it, and in that way passed through 
many countries, giving out oracles. 






TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 457 

must needs run away from Cappadocia. Do I do you injus- 
tice in saying that you have a sallow look, and can hardly 
fetch your breath, and have but a stint of the sun's rays? 
While we, on the contrary, are sleek and plump, not pent up, 
as in your case, in city walls. You live in luxury, and have 
your markets to attend. For this I do not praise you. Cease 
then to reproach me with my mud (for neither have you built 
the city, nor have I produced the wintry weather), or in re- 
turn for your laugh at our mud, we will laugh at your taverns, 39 
and all the other odious things which cities bring along with 
them. 

TO THE SAME. 

Be as droll and sarcastic as you please at my expense, whether 
you do it in play, or to answer a purpose. It is no matter ; 
only smile on ; indulge your vein of wit and pleasantry, you 
are sure of my friendship. All things are agreeable to me 
which come from you, whatever, or of whatever sort they may 
be. For I suspect that you are throwing ridicule upon my 
situation here, not for ridicule's sake, but (if I know anything 
of you) that you may draw me over to you ; as we dam up 
streams to divert them into another channel. This is always 
your way with me. But I must admire, forsooth, your Pontus 
and your Pontic darkness, and your settlement there, very 
worthy of being a place of exile, and your rocky heights hang- 
ing over your head, and the wild beasts putting one's faith to 
the test, and the wilderness below; and then that mouse-hole 
which bears the venerable names of a study, monastery, and 
school, and the wild and thickset copses, and the round of 
rugged mountains with which you are not so properly en- 
circled as hemmed in ; and the stinted air and the desiderated 
sun, whose rays you receive as through a chimney. O ye 
Pontians, ye Cimmerians, ye sunless people ! not simply con- 
demned to a six month's night, as it is reported of some, but 



39 avTi irrj\<i)v tsq KcnrrjXag. It is evident that the play upon the words 
must be lost in the translation. 



458 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

having no portion of your life exempt from shade, — one 
long night your whole existence — no better than "the shadow 
of death," to use the Scripture phrase. I admire, again, your 
" strait and narrow way," 40 leading I know not whether, to 
the Kingdom, or to Hades, but, for your sake, I hope the former. 
And that place in the middle— what will you ? Shall I sacri- 
fice truth and call it Eden, and the fountain divided into four 
heads, 41 from which the whole world is watered? Or shall 
I call it a dreary and dry wilderness without a Moses there to 
give relief by turning the rock into a spring with his rod ? 
Wherever there is not a rock there is a ravine, and wherever 
there is not a ravine there is a thicket of brambles, and what- 
ever is above the brambles is a precipice, and the road over 
this is precipitous and tottering upon its base, making the 
travellers look sharp about them to keep themselves from 
tumbling; and a river roars beneath (which, to you, is the 
quiet Strymon of Amphipolis) not so full of fishes as of stones, 
not emptying itself into a lake, but drawn down into the 
deeps. 42 O thou grandiloquous man, and coiner of new words ! 
It is, in truth, a great and horrible stream, which overpowers 
with its roar the psalmody of those who live above it. No- 
thing compared to this are the cataracts and falls of the 
Nile. Such a din does it keep up in your ears all day and 
night. Rough as it is with stones it is unfordable, and so 
muddy that you cannot drink it. The only kind feature in its 
character is this, that it does not sweep away your habitation 
when it is lashed into fury by torrents and tempests. So now 
you have what I think of these Fortunate Islands, and of you 
who are so fortunate as to live there. Let us hear no more of 

40 Which is the language used in Scripture {^evrj rj jrvXt] icai TiOXi^fievrj 
77 bdog) to express the narrow road that leads to heaven. (Matth. vii. 14). 
The allusion is hardly within the bounds of that reverence which might have 
been expected from this sainted father. 

41 Here the writer obviously alludes to Gen. ii. 10, using the very words of 
the Septuagint, Tlora/xog 8e €K7ropevsrai e% Edep, ttoti^slv tov Hapadeicov 
iKuBtv atyopi&rai eig Tscrcrapag apxag. 

42 The Strymon is a river of Macedon, which forms several lakes before it 
flows into the sea near Amphipolis. Plin. c. x. 1. 4. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBAN1US. 459 

the praises of these moon-shaped bendings, which rather choke 
up, than wall up, the approaches to the foot of your moun- 
tains ; and of that neck of land hanging over your head, which 
makes your life like that of Tantalus; and those fanning airs, 
and those land-breezes which revive you when your spirits 
droop; and those melodious birds which sing indeed, but sing 
of hunger, and fly about indeed, but through the desert. No 
one travels there, you say, but for the sake of hunting ; add, 
if you please, to visit your corpses. What I have said may 
be too long for a letter, but too short for a comedy. Now if 
you take this jesting in good part, it will be well; but, if 
otherwise, I shall not quit the subject. 

TO THE SAME. 

Since you take my raillery so well, hear a little more. Let 
me take my start from Homer, 

' But come, let us pass on, and sing the furniture within ;' 43 

the roofless and doorless shelter, the fireless and smokeless 
hearth, the walls which had been baked by fire, for fear we 
might be pelted with the falling drops of mud, whilst we, poor 
fellows, sharing in the fate of Tantalus, were thirsting all the 
while for water; and then that wretched, meagre, hunger- 
bitten banquet, to which we have been bidden out of Cappa- 
docia, like poor, miserable, shipwrecked mariners, not as if we 
were invited to the poverty-struck table of the Lotophagi, but 
to the feast of an Alcinous. For I well remember, aye, and I 
ever shall remember, that bread and that broth, as they were 
called; my teeth slipping and sliding, and then rising and 
emerging, as if they were struggling out of mire. You your- 
self can rehearse these tragedies in a loftier strain, having all 
that eloquence to set them off with, which familiarity with 
suffering inspires ; from which, unless that noble lady had 

43 AW ays St) (ji€Tafir)Qi Kat i-mrs Koafiov auaov. Odyss. 9. alluding to 
the Trojan horse. Our author varies the line so as to suit his use of it. 



460 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

speedily delivered us, that true supporter of the needy, I mean 
your mother, appearing as a seasonable haven to the tempest- 
tossed, we should have been long since numbered with the 
dead, not so much praised as pitied for our Pontic faith. How 
can I pass by those ungardenlike and cabbageless gardens, 
and that Augean dirt, cleared out of the house, with which we 
filled them, when we drew that loaded cart, I the vintager, 
and you the man of delicacy, with these necks and hands of 
ours, which still bear the marks of our employment, (O earth 
and sun! O man and virtue ! for I must, a while, play the 
tragedian) not that we might yoke the Hellespont, but that 
we might level some rough piece of ground. If you feel no 
disgust at the recital of these things, neither do i". But if 
you are disgusted at the recital, how should not / take disgust 
at the practical part which I have had in it? I shall pass 
over sundry more particulars, ashamed to speak of those many 
other occupations which formed our amusement. 

TO THE SAME. 

What I wrote to you in reference to your fine Pontic decla- 
mation was sportively not seriously written; what I now write 
is written with feelings very serious. O that I were as in 
those months past, 44 in which it was my luxury to endure 
hardness 45 with you (since voluntary pain is better than forced 
pleasure). O for those psalms and vigils, and those outgoings 
to God in prayer, and that life as it were immaterial and dis- 
embodied ! O for that intimate and soul-union of the brethren 
lifted aloft and made godlike by you ! O for that emulation, 
and that provocation to virtue, to which so much strength was 

44 I have only before me the edition of Gregory's works by Jac. Billius, an 
abbot of the sixteenth century, in which the words are tlq av jxereirj Kara /nrjva 
rjfitpuv rwv tfnrpoaBtv ekslvojv. The passage is from the Septuagint, in 
which the words are tlq av /u? deir], mistakingly above printed fisreir]. The 
Hebrew words being *mjt *b, a form of expression by which is indicated an 
earnest wish, and so rendered by our translators. 

45 So our translators give the meaning of KciKO7ra0r)<7ov in 2 Tim. ii. 3. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 461 

added by your directions and rules ! O for that sweet study 
of the divine oracles, and that light discovered in them by the 
guidance of the Holy Spirit ; or, to speak of things smaller 
and more common, O for those daily tasks and willing labours, 
bearing wood, and cutting stone, planting trees, and making 
channels for the streams. O that golden plane tree, 46 far ex- 
celling the plane tree of Xerxes, beneath which not the pam- 
pered King, but the mortified monk was seated, which I planted, 
ApOllos watered, that is your own excellent self, but to which 
God himself gave the increase, for my honour, that a monu- 
ment might remain with you of my cheerful toil, as the budding 
rod of Aaron was said to be preserved in the ark ! All this is, 
indeed, easy enough to wish, but difficult to bring about. 
But come to me, breathe virtue into me, and work together 
with me : and that profit which we acquired together assist in 
preserving by your prayers, lest, by little and little, we fade 
away like shadows in our declining day. Your communica- 
tions are to me more refreshing than the air I breathe ; I live 
only that life which I live with you when present, or with your 
image in my mind when absent. 



The following letter appears to have been written by Gre- 
gory, after receiving one, probably the one exhibited before in 
this volume, complaining of the disregard shewn by Gregory 
to his plan of retirement in the woods of Pontus. 



TO BASIL. 

How could you think that your concerns were little and of 
small account 47 in my eyes, O thou divine and holy man ! what 

46 According to Herodotus it was Darius to whom the present of a golden 
plane tree and vine was made by Pythias. See Herod. 1. vii. s. 28. It is not 
of much importance to whom, but see the note by Valcknaer. 

47 The Greek word is S7ri<pv\\ig. By e7ri<pv\\ideg is meant the refuse of the 
grapes, which, after the vintage, is left for the gleaners ; and thus the word 
e7ri(pvXXiQ is used to signify what is of little or no value; or deserving of 
contempt. 



462 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

word is this that has escaped from your mouth. 48 Or how 
could you find the heart to utter such an accusation ? Was it 
that I should take a little courage to expostulate ? How has 
either your mind suggested such thoughts ? or your ink written 
them ? or your paper received them ? O those studies, that 
Athens, those virtuous exercises, and that sweat 49 of applica- 
tion ! You almost make me a tragedian by your letters. Whom 
are you least acquainted with, — me or yourself? O thou who 
art the eye of the world, its great voice and trumpet, its 
palace 50 of learning. What, your concerns small in the eyes 
of Gregory ! What is there in this earth admired by any, if 
Gregory admires not thee ? As there is but one spring among 
the seasons, one sun among the stars, one heaven encircling all 
things, so there is but one voice supreme above all other things 
on earth, and that is thine, if I am at all fit to judge of these 
matters, and the love which enchants me does not also deceive 
me, which I do not think it does. But if what you charge 
me with is this — that I do not admire you as you deserve to 
be admired, you include all men under this charge, for no one 
did ever, or will ever express their admiration of you in terms 
equal to your deserts, without being qualified as you are, and 
possessing your magnificence of language ; if a man could pos- 
sibly be his own eulogist, or propriety did not forbid it. Before 
you accuse me of lightly regarding you, why not first charge 
me with having lost my senses ? Do you take it ill that I act 
the part of a philosopher ? 51 Give me leave to say that this 

A8 TIowv (re tiroQ (pvysv epKOQ o8oVT(OV, 'O/i. IX. 8. 350, £. 83. Od. \p. 70. 

49 Ttjg 5' aperrjg idpcora Seoi 7rpoirapoi9£v sOijkev. 'Raiod. ipy. k<xi r]fx. 
1. 287. 

50 BacriXeiov. He seems to play upon the name. 

51 The Greek words are aXX' on <pi\ocro(povnsv ayavaKrsig; by (piXocoQov- 
fjiev, a word often used by the early Christian writers in a very extended sense, 
Gregory is supposed to mean that he was discharging his duty towards his aged 
parents, which was his reason for his not complying with the wish of Basil by 
returning to Pontus. To make the term ' to philosophise' embrace all the 
moral duties, was quite in the spirit of those principles which entered into the 
Christianity of many, if not the greater part of its most learned professors and 
teachers in the fourth century. Basil and Gregory, whose characters and 
writings have attracted the admiration of their posterity, do both of them, in a 



TO THE TIME OF LTBANIUS. 463 

is the only thing which towers above even your learning and 
wisdom. 

TO BASIL. 

I commend the procemium of your letter. What, indeed, of 
thine is not worthy to be commended ? And so, then, you 
have been caught by this worldly promotion, as well as the 
writer of this. Since we have both of us been forcibly ad- 



certain degree, fall under the animadversions of Mosheim in his internal history 
of the Church in that century. After doing justice to the great contro- 
versialists of that period, such as Apollinaris, Gregory Nazianzen, Cyril of 
Alexandria, and others who distinguished themselves in the lists against the 
Emperor Julian, and the many others who disputed with happy success against 
the worshippers of the gods, of which number were Lactantius, Athanasius, 
Julius Fermicus Maternus, Apollinaris the younger, Augustin, and, above all, 
Eusebius ; he makes the following observations on the Christian writers of this 
century on the subject of morals. " The writings of Basil the Great, Gregory of 
Nyssa, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustin, and several others, upon moral sub- 
jects, are neither worthy of high encomiums, nor of entire contempt, as they 
contain a strange mixture of excellent reflexions, and insipid details, concerning 
the duties of the Christian life." The historian of the church does not omit 
to make honourable mention of the books of Ambrose on the * duty of the 
ministers of the church, which, he says, are justly commended for the pious 
intentions they discover, and the beautiful sentiments they contain, (though there 
are many things in them worthy of reprehension,) and of the writings of Maca- 
rius, the Egyptian monk ; but proceeds to observe that almost all the writers of 
this class are defective in several respects ; that they are wholly without order, 
method, or precision ; and that they poured out their pious but incoherent 
ideas in fortuitous combinations, just as they came uppermost ; neglecting to 
deduce the duties of mankind from their true principles, and even sometimes 
deriving them from doctrines and precepts either manifestly false, or whose 
nature and meaning are not determined with any degree of accuracy. Their 
pretended demonstrations, he says, are nothing more than a collection of airy 
fancies, cold and insipid allegories, quaint and subtle conceits, more proper to 
afford amusement to the imagination, than light to the understanding, or con- 
viction to the judgment. 

This censure may be thought by many to be overcharged, but it can hardly 
be denied that the theology of this period was much adulterated, that the 
Alexandrian schools sent forth a multitude of ' amphibious disciples' of Christ 
and Plato, and that there really did ' gain ground in this century a double doc- 
trine of morals, compounded of two systems, divine and human, to the great 
detriment of true religion.' 



464 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

vanced to the rank of presbyter, a rank which I may truly say 
we neither of us took any steps to obtain. If any thing can 
be established by testimony, we surely are witnesses for each 
other, well worthy of credit, to prove how much we love that 
humble wisdom which is content with the lowest place. But 
perhaps it has been best for us that our wishes have not been 
accomplished. Neither do I know what to say, till I know 
the mind of the Holy Spirit on this subject. Since the thing 
is done, we must bear it, as it seems to me at least, especially 
on account of the present crisis, which brings so many tongues 
of heretics upon us ; and which demand of us that we should 
not do discredit to the confidence placed in us, or to the lives 
we have hitherto lived. 

GREGORY TO AMPHILOCH IUS, BISHOP OF ICONIUM. 52 

I have not asked you for bread, as I would not ask for water 
from the inhabitants of Ostracina. 53 But in asking for vege- 
tables from a man of Oziza, which is an article in which you 
abound, and which with us is a great rarity, I ask nothing 
extraordinary, or unusual. Do not grudge, therefore, to send 
us plenty, and the best, at least what you can. Little is much 
to those who are. in need. Since I am expecting a visit from 
the great Basil ; and, as you have seen what a satisfied philo- 
sopher can do, take care lest you feel the resentment of one 
who is hungry and out of humour. 

TO THE SAME. 

How sparingly come these vegetables from you to us! They 
must needs be vegetables of gold. And yet your riches consist 
in gardens, and rivers, and groves, and orchards, and your 
whole country affords you a great vegetable produce ; to others 
as valuable as gold ; and you live in a land of fertile meadows. 

52 To whom the celebrated work on the Holy Spirit was addressed. 

53 A city in Egypt, as it would seem, Plin. cap. 12, 1. 5. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 465 

But as to corn, it is to you a fabled felicity ; and bread to you 
may be called the food of angels, so welcome is it, and beyond 
expectation ; either, therefore, give what I ask for without 
grudging, or I shall threaten you with nothing less than a 
withholding of our corn, and then I shall know whether the 
grasshoppers are nourished by dew alone. 54 



TO GREGORY NYSSEN, A CONSOLATORY LETTER ON THE 
DEATH OF HIS BROTHER BASIL. 

Among the sorrows of my life this was in reserve for me — to 
hear of the death of Basil, and the departure of his holy soul, 
which has absented itself from us to be present with the Lord, 
after having during all his life made this the great object of 
his solicitude. By the serious and very dangerous illness 
with which I am at present afflicted, besides other hindrances, 
I am deprived of the opportunity of kissing that sacred dust, 
and of being present with you, and partaking of those proper 
consolations which your philosophy will suggest, and by which 
the friends of both of us will be comforted. For to witness 
the desolation of the church, shorn of so much glory, and 
bereaved of such a crown, is too much for the eyes or ears of 
those who are intelligent enough to be fully sensible of their 
loss. But you seem to me, surrounded as you are by friends, 

54 See Plin. 1. ii. c. 26. He seems to allude here to Esop's fable of the Ants 
and the Grasshoppers. 

The above letter of Gregory is pleasing and playful, and may be con- 
trasted with the letter of Bishop Bonner to Mr. Richard Lechmere, from his 
place of confinement, after he was deprived ; part of which runs thus : — The 
pears were so well accepted in every place, where I had so many thanks for 
distribution, that I intend, by God's grace, to send down to you your frail 
again, to have an eching either of more pears, or else of puddings, &c. ye do 
know what he doth mean by that Italian proverb, &c. I do not write to Sir 
John Burne, nor to my lady, for any thing ; their conscience is not over large ; 
and the like is in Mr. Hornvale, and also my old acquaintance John Badger. 
But if amongst you I have no puddings, then must I say as Messer, our priest 
of the hospital, said to his mad horse, in our last journey to Hostia, Al diavolo, 
al diavolo, ai tutti diavoli. See Burnet, Ref. vol. ii. part ii. Col of Rec. 
No. 37. 

H H 



466 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

and well furnished with arguments of consolation, to derive 
solace from nothing so much as from your own resources and 
from your reflexions on the deceased ; and thus you have been 
a pattern to all others of true philosophy, and, as it were, a 
sort of spiritual rule or measure of moderation in prosperity, 
and of fortitude in adversity. It is thus that philosophy 56 
manifests itself, by keeping us from being elated or depressed 
by the opposite extremes of success or calamity. In what has 
thus far fallen from me, I have been looking to the case as affect- 
ing your excellency. But by what time or argument shall I 
be consoled, who am writing this, except by your society and 
converse, by far the best legacy which that blessed man has 
bequeathed to me ; that by seeing his virtues in you, as in a 
clear and shining mirror, I may imagine myself still to have 
him in possession. 



GREGORY NAZ1ANZEN TO GREGORY NYSSEN, REPROVING 
HIM FOR LEAVING HIS SACRED STUDIES AND BOOKS AND 
APPLYING HIMSELF TO THE PRACTICE OF THE RHETO- 
RICAL ART. 

There is in my nature something that determines me to what 
is right, for I will be bold to do myself justice in this respect; 
and I am as angry with myself for giving way to evil sugges- 
tions, as I am with my friends. Since all who live in the fear 
of God, and walk uprightly in the path of the Gospel are con- 
nected together by the ties of love and affinity, why should 

55 Perhaps it will not be thought by the serious Christian that there is much 
of spirituality in the topics of consolation set forth by Gregory in this epistle. 
Neither does his funeral oration in honour of Basil exhibit the scope of that 
belief and hope which is authorized by the written word. " Now, indeed," 
says Gregory, " he is in heaven, and is there offering up, as I think, sacrifices 
for us, and praying for the people" (k«i vvv 6 [isv e^iv tv ovpavoig k&xzi rag 
virtp rj/jnov, <jjq oipai, wpoGipspojv Bvaiag, kcci tov Xaov 7rpofy%ojU£Voe). And a 
little after he speaks in this strain, " from whom I am even now receiving 
counsel, and am corrected in nightly visions, if at any time I fall from my duty," 
(w kcli vvv en vovOsrovfxai tcai (no^poviZ,ofxai Sia vvKTiptvwv oipeajv, ti iron 
tov deovrog e£w 7r£<xot/u). See his Funeral Oration on Basil. Orat. xx. 372. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 467 

not friends hear from me in plain terms what all are breathing 
in secret. They all (to speak in your manner) reprehend 
your inglorious glory, and your insensible declension, by little 
and little, to what is degrading, and that ambition, which 
Euripides has called the worst of demons. 56 What has hap- 
pened to you, who were so wise and discreet, and what has 
made you so at variance with yourself, that, throwing aside 
those sweet and sacred volumes, which you were wont to 
read and expound to the people (I fear you can hear this 
without blushing), and putting them out of the way in 
some corner, as the rudders of ships, and the implements of 
husbandry are laid by in the winter season ; you take up with 
what is so salt and bitter in the place of that which is thrown 
aside, and choose rather to be called a rhetorician than a 
Christian? For my part I make a different choice, and I am 
all thankful to God on this account. But let me hope, my 
best of friends, you will not long continue in this mind ; awake 
from this intoxicating illusion, though late, and return to 
yourself,- clear your character to the faithful, to God, to 
the altars, and to the holy mysteries, from which you have 
withdrawn yourself; and do not say to me, in your fine and 
rhetorical diction, " What ! was I not a Christian when I was 
by profession a rhetorician ? Was I not a Christian when I 
was receiving my education among other young men? And, 
perhaps, you call God to witness in behalf of what you affirm. 
But I say you were by no means a Christian at the times to 
which you allude : at least not such a Christian as you ought 
to have been, even if I concede a part of what might be ex- 
pected from you. But where by your present conduct you give 
offence to others, who are prone enough of themselves to evil, 
and give them occasion to think and speak unfavourably of 
you, grant it false, I would still ask, where is the necessity 
for administering occasion to persons so disposed ? And re- 
member, that no man ought to live for himself, but for his 

56 Jocasta, addressing her son Eteocles, calls avarice the worst of demons, 
7r\eove%iav daifioviov KaKirrjv. Gregory borrows the expression. 



468 FROM THE TIME OF PHILOSTRATUS 

neighbour also ; nor is it enough to be convinced oneself, 
without producing in others the same conviction. 

It is as if you were to come upon the stage as a public boxer, 
giving and receiving blows, shamefully distorting and throw- 
ing about your body ; and could you then claim to be in your 
senses? No man in his senses could so say. For a Chris- 
tian to act in this way would surely indicate a very light mind. 
If you change your course, I shall rejoice, said one of the 
Pythagorean philosophers, lamenting the falling off of one 
of his fellow-disciples ; but if not, you are as one dead to 
me. 57 But I will not say so to you, from the love and respect 
in which I hold you. He, from a friend, became an enemy, 
but a friend still, as is said in the tragedy. But I shall grieve 
(to express myself in more moderate terms) if neither you 
yourself perceive what is your duty, which is that which 
characterizes the best men, nor follow the advice of those 
who give you good counsel, 58 which is wisdom in the second 
degree; all I can say is, — this is my advice : pardon a con- 
cern which arises from friendship, and is occasioned by the 
warm interest I take in the welfare of yourself, and of the 
whole sacerdotal order; and I will add, of the whole com- 
munity of Christians. If it behoves me to pray with, and 
for you, I pray that God will help your infirmity, and recal 
the dead to life. 



67 At the end of one of the letters of the Pythagorean scholars, in an early 
part of this volume, the sentiment alluded to occurs. The letter is from Lysis 
to Hipparchus, which ends thus : ei fiev ovv fiera€a\oio x a PV ao l J ' ai > u <^ £ /**?> 
rtOvaicag fioi, ^f you shall become changed in this respect, I shall rejoice; 
if not, you are dead as to me. C 

58 Gregory here alludes to the lines in the ' Works and Days' of Hesiod, 
i. 293, which is quoted by Aristotle in his book on Ethics, cap. iv. There is 
great good sense in the lines, as there is generally in the ' Works and Days' of 
this neglected poet. 

'Ovrog \itv TravapvzoQ, bg avToj 7ravra vor\ar\, 
&pct(T<jansvoQ ret k e-rrsira /cat tg reXog rjcriv a/mvw 
EcrGXoe; #' av kclkhvoq, bg ev uttovti TriOr/rcti' 
'Og Ss ice ixt)t' avrog voerj, \ir\T y aXkov anoviov 
Ev SvfAM /3aXX^rat, 6d' avr' axpt)'iog avijp. 



TO THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 469 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

LETTERS WRITTEN FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS TO THE 
TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 



In pursuing the course of ecclesiastical history, we proceed to 
the completion of the fourth century in the luminous track of 
John, surnamed Chrysostom, whose golden mouth continued 
to pour forth its eloquence for about eighteen years after the 
death of Gregory Nazianzen, his predecessor in the archiepis- 
copal throne of Constantinople. Among the Fathers he was 
much distinguished by the number and interest of his letters, 
and, as such, he claims no little consideration at our hands. 

He was born at Antioch, about the year 347 of the Christian 
era. On his mother's side he was descended from a family of 
opulence and distinction, and his father, Secundus, held a post 
of rank in the eastern army of the Roman emperor. His 
mother, whose name was Anthusa, was left a widow in her 
twentieth year, and continued in that state till her death ; the 
prime of her existence being wholly engrossed with the tender 
care and nurture of her son, who was indebted to her for the 
formation of his first principles. His eloquence had its birth 
and early cultivation in the school of Libanius, where he soon 
attracted the admiration of his teacher, and acquired general 
applause. For some time he remained under the captivating 
influence of the specious sophistries of Libanius, who did his 
best to recommend his pagan principles and creed to his 
scholars ; but the effects of such instruction on the mind of 
John were successfully counteracted by his pious mother. 
The first years of study were given to ancient literature, with 
which his mind was much embued ; but this early predilec- 



470 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

tion was soon succeeded by an application to sacred learning, 
and such a devout study of the Holy Scriptures as was effec- 
tual to lay the foundation of his remarkable piety, and the 
Christian fortitude which shone forth in his concluding years. 
For a short time after the completion of his literary studies, 
he engaged in the pleadings of the forum, with other candi- 
dates for political distinction ; and he appears to have merited 
the applause of Libanius by a panegyric written by him after 
the manner of the sophists, and to have been much commended 
by him for combining the cultivation of rhetoric with the 
pleader's art and profession. 1 

He soon, however, forsook the forum, and chose another 
arena for the exercise of his abilities. Under the patronage 
of Meletius, bishop of Antioch, he devoted himself to the study 
of divinity, and whatever might conduce to qualify him for 
the sacred ministry. For three years he received instruction 
in divine things from Meletius, whose fearless profession of 
the faith in the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father 
had exposed him to much opposition and persecution from the 
Arians ; and being baptized by him, that ceremony was the 
epoch of his dedication of himself to the sacred profession. 

When Meletius was banished by the Emperor Valens, 
Chrysostom, no longer under the guidance of his early friend 
and instructor, who had appointed him a public reader of the 
Scriptures, preparatory to his receiving ordination, was per- 
suaded by the example of some of his friends, probably after 
the death of his mother, to join a fraternity of monks, in the 
vicinity of Antioch, with whom he passed some years of ascetic 
seclusion, in the practice of great self-mortification. In this 
retirement he studied deeply the Holy Scriptures, lived in 

1 Among the letters of Isidore of Pelusium, who was a disciple of Chrysos- 
tom, there is one from Libanius to John, which is considered as addressed to 
Chrysostom, see Isid. 1. ii. ep. 42, in which his approbation is expressed in 
terms the most flattering. " When I received," says Libanius, " your beau- 
tiful and elegant composition, 1 read it to some persons who are well skilled in 
the rhetorical art ; none of whom, when they heard it, could forbear singing 
out and loudly vociferating their astonishment and delight." 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 471 

prayer and meditation, and composed his eloquent defence of 
the monastic life, full of good doctrine, and generally sound 
precept, however we may justly refuse our assent to the 
specific grounds and reasons on which he vindicates and 
recommends the discipline of his order. It must be admitted, 
too, that his principal argument with parents to induce them 
to place their children under the monks for instruction was 
the tendency that instruction had to qualify them, on their re- 
turn to active life, for a better discharge of their several duties, 
and to secure them against the contaminations of the world. 
He proposed an education for the young far superior to the 
vain, ostentatious, and superficial instruction afforded in the 
schools of the sophists of that day. 

After some years spent in monastic retirement, during which 
Chrysostom pursued with such unremitting ardour his sacred 
exercises and studies, that his health became impaired, he 
returned to Antioch in the year 380 a. d. bringing with him 
a zeal in behalf of monachism which, for some time, seemed 
principally to occupy his mind, till further enquiry and expe- 
rience led him gradually to more practical views of his duty 
as a Christian minister. 

In his work upon the martyr Babylas, he has introduced 
many sound observations, mingled with much credulity; and 
this, as well as other of his performances, has proved him to 
have shared in the superstition characteristic of his age. It 
is due however to this venerable man to advert to the many 
sound and moderate sentiments contained in his two treatises 
on Contrition, and especially in the second, in which, where 
he speaks of the qualifications necessary for the labours of the 
ministry, he mainly urges the importance of severe preparatory 
study, on the ground of the discontinuance of the power of 
working miracles, which called for the more energetic and in- 
dustrious efforts of human instrumentality. The demand upon 
the church for its general vigilance, and the specific responsi- 
bilities of its pastoral engagements, cannot easily be shown 
to have been enforced with more simplicity and solemnity by 
any writer of any period, than by this luminary of the fourth 



472 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

century. His Homilies on St. John and the Acts of the 
Apostles may be recommended in these times, for the very 
sound and safe opinions in which they abound. He directs 
the catechumens to the living fountains, as the true sources 
of knowledge, and proclaims with holy zeal their indepen- 
dence on human traditions, and the collateral supplements 
of man's authority, thus placing the church in its proper 
subordination to the revealed and written testimony ; and 
greatly does it conduce to the lustre of Chrysostom, that, 
instead of referring the heathen or ignorant enquirer to the 
authority and tradition of the church, for doctrine and instruc- 
tion, he sends them to the Bible, with an injunction to search 
freely, but with docile minds, the sacred record, and to build 
their Christianity upon its broad foundations. 

After many years of laborious preaching and public teach- 
ing, as a presbyter at Antioch, Chrysostom was brought from 
the Syrian capital to the imperial city, by the influence and 
patronage of Eutropius, the minister of the Emperor Arcadius, 
to fill the archiepiscopal throne of Constantinople, vacated in 
the year 397 by the death of Nectarius, the successor of 
Gregory Nazianzen. Here his piety, illustrated by his extra- 
ordinary talents, soon made him the object of admiration with 
some, and of envy with others ; of which latter description 
was the numerous faction of the Arian heresy ; and his free 
censures of the rich and luxurious, and especially the gay and 
profligate females of that class, brought upon him the resent- 
ment and persecution of the most powerful about the court, 
and among the people. If we credit the statements both of 
Socrates and Sozomen, Chrysostom was naturally irritable, 
and having entered into conflict with whatever was offensive 
to Christian holiness and morality among the wealthier citi- 
zens, he was soon involved in a quarrel with the Empress 
Eudoxia, whose dissolute manners became the object of his 
severe public reprehension. While engaged in this unequal 
contest, his austerity, privacy, and abstinence, which implicitly 
rebuked the rest of the clergy, and the severity of his disci- 
pline, which declared itself in the deposition of twenty bishops 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 473 

on his visitation through his Asiatic provinces, provoked so 
powerful a combination against him, with the empress at the 
head, and conducted by Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, 
that the archbishop found it impossible to withstand its vio- 
lence. The articles of impeachment, on which the sentence 
of his deposition was grounded, and which were pronounced 
by a synod of bishops, convened in the suburb of Chalcedon, 
surnamed the Oak, and thence called the Synod of the Oak, 
were remarkable for their absurdity, and sufficiently exposed 
the malignity of the whole contrivance. After being sent into 
exile in Bithynia, the archbishop was brought back in triumph 
by the changing tide of faction in the city ; but fell again under 
the same displeasure by a repetition of his offence, and was 
conveyed away, first to Bithynia, then to Sebastia, and thirdly 
to Cucusus, a desolate town among the ridges of Mount Taurus, 
in which place, and in the neighbouring towns of Arabissus 
and Pityus, Chrysostom passed three years in solitude; the 
last, and, as it has been truly said, the most illustrious and 
glorious of a life of sixty years, which terminated in 407. 

Neither the ridges of Taurus, nor the length nor impediment 
of the way, could prevent the correspondence of Chrysostom 
with his Christian friends. During the three years of his 
exile, in which he was transported, in a state of much infirmity 
and weariness of body, from place to place, enquiry and soli- 
citude concerning him, seemed to spread and increase, in 
proportion to the efforts used to carry him out of sight and 
hearing. Neither the splendour of the capital, nor its imperial 
court, were able to divert attention from the little, far-distant 
spot, where the banished prelate still breathed, and made the 
import of his surname acknowledged, amidst surrounding 
desolation, and separated by a mountain-barrier from the 
general commerce of life. His fortitude did not appear to 
give way under the pressure of his hard treatment; and if, 
when his prosperity was at its height, the rigour with which 
his sacerdotal authority was exercised, was the subject of 
various interpretations, no one could now withhold from the 
solitary saint, on whom faction had exhausted its virulence, 



474 FROM THE TIME OF LiBANIUS 

the admiration due to a magnanimity sustained by its own 
resources, and retreating to that fortress of invisible strength, 
whose security needs not the help, nor fears the assaults of 
men. 

His eloquence has never been denied. To have read him, 
without praising him, would have hazarded any scholar's repu- 
tation. None of the Fathers of the fourth century partook so 
largely of the l<j\vq 3"£m, which was his own phrase in cha- 
racterizing the style of St. John. He greatly surpassed his 
master, the sophist Libanius, and all the rhetoric of those 
schools, whence he derived the rudimental precepts of his 
oratory, if he did not rather borrow them from Aristophanes, 
as has been said, and the best Athenian models. The muse 
of Greece unlocked her secret recesses at the touch of his rod, 
and imparted to him her richest treasures ; and even the praises 
of Suidas may not be thought excessive, when he compares his 
abundance to the cataracts of the Nile. 

But as to the weight and worth of what is conveyed in the 
beautiful language of Chrysostom, judgment has usually been 
pronounced under a bias for or against his religious opinions. 
Erasmus has allowed him the praise of vivacity and good 
sense, and candidly imputed his errors to the uncultivated 
state of ecclesiastical antiquity. But Luther, with an un- 
sparing hand, while he grants him to have been an eloquent 
speaker, charges him with " digressing from his chief points, 
running astray, and swinging about, saying nothing, or very 
little, of that which pertaineth to the business in hand/* 2 

Perhaps there may sometimes be justly imputed to Chry- 
sostom a degree of culpable redundancy even in his matter, 
which is nevertheless replete with great and immortal truths : 
his affluence of expression may occasionally have betrayed him 
into repetitions ; and the beauty of simplicity may sometimes 
have been obscured by artificial graces. His letters, written 
during his exile at Cucusus, are very elegant and interesting, 
and are hardly second among the Fathers to those of Gregory 

2 Colloq. Mens. c. 29, who, in another place, talks of his writings as a wild 
disordered heap, and a sack full of windy words. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 475 

Nazianzen. In the following epistle he relates to his faithful 
friend, the Deaconess Olympias, 3 his journey through Csesarea 
to the place of his banishment. 

TO THE MOST VENERABLE AND PIOUS LADY OLYMPIAS, 
DEACONESS, JOHN BISHOP SENDS HEALTH. 

Does the dreariness of this place affect you with sorrow on 
my account ? Yet, after all, what can be more agreeable than 
this sojourn ? Behold me in the enjoyment of tranquillity, 
serenity, a perfect exemption from care, and with health of 
body: and if this city possesses neither forum nor market, in 
these I have no interest : for all things come to me here in a 
copious stream, as from a fountain. I have my respected friends 
the bishop, and Dioscorus, with me, who seem to have no 
other concern upon their hands but their study to comfort and 
refresh me. Moreover, Patricius, that excellent man, will tell 
you how cheerfully and agreeably, amidst mutual services 
and kindnesses, we pass our time in this place, such as it 
is. But if the things which befel me in my passage through 
Csesarea cause you uneasiness, you do not in this thing act 
as becomes you; for there, also, were crowns wrought for me 
of true lustre. All are pleased to praise and commend 
me, and are perfectly amazed when they hear of my ejec- 
tion, and the many grievous injuries which accompanied it. 
But, I pray you, let not this be made known, even though 
many idle reports may be propagated concerning me. My 
Lord Pseanius informed me that the presbyters of Phare- 

3 Olympias had been a faithful adherent to Chrysostom during all his trou- 
bles in Constantinople. She was a lady of high birth, ample estate, and great 
beauty, but still more distinguished by her piety and her purity of conduct. 
She had been the wife of Nebridius, a man high in office, who had been put to 
death on a charge of mal-administration. Notwithstanding many solicitations, 
she had resolutely refused to marry again, by which she greatly offended the 
Emperor Theodosius, who had much importuned her in behalf of his kinsman, 
Elfridius. While Nectarius, the immediate predecessor of Chrysostom, was 
archbishop of Constantinople, she had been made deaconess of the church. 
Chrysostom wrote seventeen letters to her during his exile. She was afterwards 
herself banished to Nicomedia, from whence she sent helps to Chrysostom, and 
there she ended her days. 



476 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

trius were there also, and affirmed that they communicated 
with me, and had no part in the feelings of my adversaries, 
nor had any intercourse or commerce with them; and I had 
rather the real facts were not made known, that I may avoid 
giving any disturbance to these persons. But the truth is, 
that what happened to me was very grievous and bitter. And, 
indeed, if I had been made to endure no other troubles or 
hardships than those to which I have alluded, enough has 
been suffered to gain for me innumerable palms of victory. 
Such has been my treatment, that my life has been in imminent 
danger. Beseeching you to abstain from making these matters 
known, I will proceed briefly to lay them before you ; not to 
give you sorrow, but pleasure, for these things are my gain, 
and my riches. They lessen the cost of my sins ; they were trials 
which led me gradually forward to those which were brought 
on me by persons from whom they were least to be expected. 
When we were entering Cappadocia, having narrowly escaped 
death in Galata, many persons met us on our road, saying, 
'Pharetrius is expecting you, and proceeds in every direction 
that he may be sure of meeting you ; and no labour or pains 
does he spare to see and embrace you, and give you a proof 
of his affection for you ; at the same time he has put all the 
monasteries, of men as well as women, in commotion to pre- 
pare for your reception.' Not deceived by these assurances, 
I looked for nothing of all this to be done, but the very con- 
trary, though I took care to say nothing of my real expecta- 
tions to those who were telling these things to me. 

But after I had entered into Csesarea, being worn down with 
fatigue and exhaustion, in an advanced state of fever, suffering 
great pain and extreme weariness, I found a lodging, situated 
at the very extremity of the city, and set about obtaining 
medical aid, to allay the furnace within me ; for I was then 
in the crisis of a tertian fever. To this was added the harass 
and fatigue of the journey, the wear and consumption of the 
bodily frame, the want of persons near me to take any care of 
me, and the utter destitution of all things necessary to such a 
condition. The want of physicians to have recourse to ; the 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 477 

labour, and lassitude, and heat of the weather, and the depri- 
vation of sleep, had brought me to the lowest state, so that I 
entered the city rather dead than alive. Then all the clergy, 
the people, the monks, and medical men, flowed in upon me, 
by whom I was received with the greatest assiduity, all wait- 
ing upon me, and proffering their services. Meanwhile the 
fever was raging within me, and I was in the greatest danger. 
At length, by degrees, the disorder began to remit its seve- 
rity, and to be somewhat quieted. But as yet no appearance 
of Pharetrius. In truth he was expecting my departure. 
When, therefore, I found my disorder sensibly abated, I began 
to think of setting forward, that I might reach Cucusus, and 
enjoy a little repose from the fatigues and vexations of my 
journey. But while things were in this state, news was sud- 
denly brought to me that the Isaurians, with a countless force, 
were laying waste the territory about Csesarea, and had burned 
a large town, and committed great slaughter. On hearing 
this, the tribune collected what force he could, and marched 
out of the city, which he apprehended would be immediately 
attacked by these barbarians ; and so alarmed were the inha- 
bitants by the danger that threatened their native town, that 
even the old men undertook the defence of the walls. 

While things were in this posture, on a sudden, at early 
dawn, a cohort of monks (for I may be allowed to use this 
word to express their violence) came to the house where I was 
lodged, threatening to set it on fire, and to proceed to every 
extremity, if I did not forthwith leave the city. Neither 
the dread of the Isaurians, nor the disorder by which I was still 
oppressed, nor any other consideration, could moderate their 
fury, but breathing only violence, they insisted upon my com- 
pliance, with such vehemence, that the soldiers themselves 
were overawed ; for they devoted them to all sort of plagues, 
and boasted that they had shamefully handled, before then, 
many soldiers of the city guard. Hearing these words, the 
soldiers came and besought me that, even if I must do it at 
the risk of being set upon by the Isaurian bands, I would 
deliver them from these brutes. When this was told the pre- 



478 FROM THE TrME OF LIBANIUS 

feet of the city, he came to our house to give us his protection. 
But not even by his entreaties were the monks at all moved, 
and he himself was losing his courage. Not seeing, therefore, 
any escape from the difficulty, and being unwilling to send us 
out to certain destruction, he sent to Pharetrius, imploring 
him earnestly that, as well on account of the disorder under 
which I was suffering, as the impending danger from the 
barbarians, he would allow me a few days delay. But even 
this availed nothing ; on the next day the attack upon me was 
more furious. Nor did any of the presbyters venture to bring 
us any assistance : but with shame and confusion (for they 
confessed that all was done with the full consent and direction 
of Pharetrius 4 ) withdrew, and concealed themselves, nor paid 
attention to our summons when sent for. 

But what need of further details. Although so many terrors 
hung over us, and death was almost certain, and looked us in 
the face, and fever robbed me of all strength (for from this evil 
I was not yet relieved), at about the hour of noon, throwing 
myself into my litter, I left the city, while all the people were 
lamenting and bewailing my departure, and execrating and 
devoting to perdition the person who had occasioned it. When 
I had proceeded some way out of the city, some of the eccle- 
siastics followed me with a slow pace, in great sorrow, exclaim- 
ing, whither are you going to certain destruction? while 
another of the party attached to us, addressing me, cried, 
" Go, I beseech you, go, fall into the hands of the Isaurians, 
only escape from us ! for into whosesoever hands you fall, it 
will be safety to be rescued from ours !" 

Seleucia, that excellent lady, the wife of my Lord Rufinus 
(she was one of those who kindly attached themselves to us, 
and were solicitous to render us service), finding things in 
this train, besought me to accept a lodging in her villa, distant 

4 Pharetrius was at this time bishop of Csesarea : and when we look to the 
shameful conduct of this man, holding such authority and station, with an army 
of brutal monks ready to execute his will, in defiance of all decency, humanity, 
and law, we have a picture of these times that exhibits the Christian church of 
the fourth century in a very degraded character. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 479 

from the city about five miles, and dispatched certain persons 
to conduct me thither. Nor even there were these plots laid 
against me, to terminate. For as soon as Pharetrius was made 
acquainted with what had happened, he assailed with threats 
the lady herself: ail which was kept from me when I was 
received within her villa ; for when she came out to meet me 
she mentioned nothing of it; but explaining the affair to her 
steward, ordered him to do every thing serviceable to me, 
and if the monks should come to abuse or ill treat me, to call 
together the labourers from her other villas, and to contend 
hand to hand with the monks ; desiring me to take refuge 
in her house, which had a tower in it, strong enough to re- 
sist any attacks they could make upon it; that thus I 
might be rescued from the hands both of the bishop and the 
monks. But this I could not be induced to do. While I was 
in the house I remained ignorant of what was in preparation 
for my annoyance. My safety, however, could not thus be 
secured from their furious designs against me ; for soon after- 
wards, in the middle of the night, while I was in ignorance 
of what was going on, Pharetrius came, and with vehement 
menaces insisted upon my being ejected from the city's suburbs, 
so that the lady being unable to bear the importunity of this 
man any longer, without my knowing it, gave him to under- 
stand that the barbarians were near at hand, and shame would 
not allow her to allude to the violence to which she might be 
exposed. After this, at dead of nighty the Presbyter Evetheus 
coming in, and rousing me from sleep, clamoured out, " Rise, 
I beseech you, the barbarians are coming, and are close at 
hand." Consider only with what feelings I heard all this. 
But when I besought him to say what was to be done, as it 
was impossible to seek refuge in the city, where we might have 
to encounter worse treatment than was to be dreaded even from 
the Isaurians, he urged the necessity of an immediate flight. 

The night was dark, moonless, and very gloomy, which 
aggravated the distress occasioned by the want of some guide 
to direct us; nor was any one with us who could bring us 
help : all had abandoned us. Nevertheless, compelled by the 



480 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

danger in which we felt ourselves, expecting death every 
moment ; and almost sinking under my vexations, I rose, and 
desired torches to be lighted ; but these the presbyter ordered 
to be extinguished, lest, as he said, the barbarians, attracted 
by the light, might rush upon us. The torches, therefore, 
being put out, the mule which carried my litter, the way being 
very difficult, rough, and stony, fell upon his knees, bringing 
my litter with myself to the ground, and I had well nigh lost 
my life by the accident. Rising from the ground I crawled 
along, Evetheus the presbyter, who had leaped from his horse, 
holding me by my hands; and thus conducted, or rather 
dragged, I crept along ; for such was the difficulty of the 
way, and so perilous the passage of the mountains, it being in 
the middle of the night, that I was unable to use my feet. 
Judge, therefore, I pray you, what was my state of mind in 
such circumstances ; surrounded by such evils, oppressed with 
fever, unacquainted with what was in preparation for me, in 
fear and horror of the barbarians, and expecting nothing less 
than to fall into their hands. Do you not think that all these 
calamities, if nothing else had befallen me, would avail to dis- 
solve many of my sins, and bring me much occasion of glory. 5 
But of all these sufferings which I have been exposed to, I 
take this to have been the cause. On my first entering 
Csesarea, all the persons in any offices of the magistracy, lieu- 
tenancies, or presidencies, the sophists, the ex-tribunes, and 
the common people generally, came every day to see, visit, 
and pay court to me. This it was, I verily believe, which ex- 
cited the jealousy of Pharetrius. Nor do I think that the 
envy which drove me from Constantinople ceased from perse- 
cuting me at Csesarea ; at least this is my suspicion ; but I 
state it only as a conjecture, not as a fact of which I can speak 
with certainty. And who can recount those other things 
which were yet to be endured in my journey — the fears and 



5 The Greek words are 7ro\\d tjjiujv SvvaaOai diaXveiv tcjv afxapTJifiarow, 
Kai TroWriv fiot 7raptx eiV ^vdoKifirjaetag a(j)opfir}v. These views are often ob- 
servable in his letters. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINAIUS. 481 

dangers yet to be encountered ? Which, indeed, when I bring 
them to my recollection, and under review in their full extent, 
I fly, I spring from my place with joy, as if I had found a 
vast hidden treasure : such is the state of my mind and 
affections. And I beseech you, that on the same account, 
you would rejoice and exult, and give praise and glory to 
God, from whom we have obtained the privilege of suffering 
so much. And furthermore, my request is, that you keep 
these things entirely to yourself, revealing them to no one; 
even though other persons, those connected with the courts 
of justice especially, fill the whole city with the rumour of 
them, as being themselves in jeopardy of their lives on the 
same account. But from you let no one hear of them. I 
wish you even to restrain others, who may be disposed to 
publish them. 

But if on account of what remains for me of sufferings you 
are troubled in mind, let me assure you that I am now entirely 
free from all vexations, and that I enjoy better health than 
when at Constantinople ; and the cold, too, why should you so 
much dread it for me? since a commodious dwelling has now 
been built for me, and my Lord Dioscorus has taken every 
precaution to prevent my feeling the slightest inconvenience 
from cold? But if a conjecture as to the future may be 
formed from the beginning of my sojourn here, the climate is 
quite oriental, and not inferior to that of Antioch, so genial 
and temperate is the air. But something you have said has 
given me pain. Perhaps you are displeased with me for 
having been neglectful, through inadvertence, of my duty to 
you. But the truth is, I long ago dispatched a letter to you, 
entreating you to take no steps to obtain my removal from 
this place. I had considered with myself, that there would be 
need of a long argument, and much effort and labour, to satisfy 
me about that expression which you used. Although, perhaps, 
I should have been satisfied, when the import of the words used 
were properly understood. The words were these — " My only 
thought is how I may increase my suffering." But this again 
I regard as something highly sinful, that you profess volun- 

i i 



482 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

tarily, and designedly, to encourage thoughts that bring sorrow 
with them. For as you certainly are in duty to yourself bound 
to try and contrive everything to obliterate sadness from your 
mind, you do what is agreeable to Satan, by augmenting 
your grief and trouble. Have you never considered how evil a 
thing is sorrow ? Concerning the Isaurians, you need after this 
feel no uneasiness; for they have gone back to their own coun- 
try. We are much safer here than we were at Csesarea. There 
are none I so dread as the bishops. 

TO THE VERY VENERABLE AND PIOUS DEACONESS OLYMPIAS, 
JOHN, BISHOP, SENDS HEALTH, IN THE LORD. FROM 
CUCUSUS. 

I write this, just recalled from the gates of death. And I 
greatly rejoice, that your servants reached me only just when 
I was entering the haven. For if they had come to me while 
I was yet tossed about at sea, amidst the fluctuations of the 
disorder, with which I was struggling, had I sent you cheerful 
instead of afflicting intelligence, your affection would have seen 
through the deception. The fact is, that the winter setting in 
with unusual severity, brought as it were a still severer winter 
into my stomach, and has made me pass two months in a state 
of suffering not less sharp, but rather more grievous, than the 
agonies of death itself. All that I seemed to live for, was to be 
sensible of the evils with which I was surrounded. Whether it 
was morning, or noon, it signified not, all was only night to me. 
I passed entire days without rising from bed; and although I 
used a thousand contrivances to obtain warmth, yet I was 
wholly unable to get rid of the bitter cold that seized upon me. 
For although I kept a good fire, endured all the evil of smoke, 
kept close in bed wrapped in a multitude of coverings, and 
never ventured to the door, I nevertheless endured extreme 
torture; — excessive nausea, head-ache, loathing of food, and 
nights perpetually without sleep. Each sleepless night w 7 as 
like a long voyage on the ocean. But that I may not torment 
you by dwelling any longer on these troubles, know that I am 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 483 

now happily delivered from them all. For as soon as the 
Spring made its appearance, all my ailments, of their own 
accord, took their leave of me. But still there is need of great 
caution in the regulation of my diet, and I take, of course, great 
care not to impose too much upon my stomach. 

But in the midst of all my own sufferings, I have been 
greatly affected by the accounts which have reached me of 
the state to which you yourself have been reduced by a sick- 
ness which threatened your life. Although my great affection 
for you, and anxiety about you, was not suffered to be long in 
ignorance of your state, as, before the receipt of your letters, 
very many persons hastened to me with the news of your res- 
toration to health. And now I rejoice greatly, not so much 
that you are delivered from your malady, but especially that 
you bear what has happened to you so bravely and nobly, 
calling all these things only a tale told ; and what makes your 
bestowing of this name upon the disorder of your bodily frame 
more to be admired, is this — that it is the indication of a 
courageous soul, and of a fortitude full of fruit : for not only 
with a bold mind to bear troubles and adversities, but to account 
them as nothing, and to win as an easy purchase the crown of 
patience, without labour, or toil, or trouble, or molestation to 
others, but exulting and leaping for joy ; this is an argument and 
proof of a philosophy absolute and perfect at all points. There- 
fore I do rejoice and exult, and am carried into the air with 
delight, lose all perception of present anxieties and vexations, 
am quite overwhelmed with pleasure and glory, in contem- 
plating the magnitude of your mind ; and that not for your 
sake only, but on account of that great and populous city to 
which you stand in the place of tower, harbour, and wall; 
speaking as it were, with a distinct voice by those calamities, 
and instructing all ranks of men, and calling upon them 
promptly and zealously to gird themselves for contests like 
those you have been engaged in, and to endure with patience 
whatever conflicts like these they may have to contend with. 

But what is admirable in your case is this, — not that you 
throw yourself into the public forum, not that you go out into 



484 FROM THE TIME OF LTBANIUS, 

the midst of the city, but that while you are quietly seated in 
your little chamber, and upon your couch, you impart courage 
to those around you, and sharpen them for the conflict; and 
while the sea without you is raging, the waves swelling, and 
the rocks are lying below the waters, and their truculent 
inhabitants are appearing on all sides, and the deepest dark- 
ness is investing all things, you, as if it was a season of 
meridian and calm tranquillity, sailing before the wind with 
the expanded sails of your patience, conduct your course with 
the utmost facility; and so far are you from being over- 
whelmed by the tempest, that you are hardly touched by 
the spray. And this is all natural, when virtue is at the 
helm. The merchants^ pilots, and mariners, and persons inte- 
rested in the freight, when they perceive the gathering of the 
clouds, and the driving force of the savage winds, and the 
agitated surface of the sea, rising in foaming billows, keep 
back the ships within the harbour ; but if they happen to be at 
sea, what efforts do they not make to bring the vessel to some 
shore, or island, or bank ; but you, when innumerable winds 
are blowing, and the huge waves are dashing against each 
other on every side, and the sea by the violence of the storm 
is throwing up its waters from its gulphy depths, and some 
are going to the bottom, others, deprived of life, are the sport 
of the billows, and others are borne about naked on planks ; 
you leap at once into the sea of troubles, navigating in the 
midst of the storm with a prosperous course, treating all these 
things as nothing. Nor is this wonderful when your charac- 
ter is considered. 

Let the commanders of ships possess what science they may, 
they have not that art which contends with every storm; and 
therefore it is that they often shun a contest with the waves. 
But with you there is a skill superior to every tempest, — the 
valour of a philosophic mind, which is more than equal to all 
trials, more powerful than all weapons, safer than walls and 
battlements. Arms, and walls, and towers, are for the assist- 
ance of armies, and the protection of the person, but are not 
always, nor perpetually, effectual for those ends ; for all these 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 485 

defences are often overcome, and leave those, who look to them 
for help, in a state of destitution. It is true, the arms which you 
use have broken and destroyed no weapons of the barbarians, 
no machines or engines of war, nor foiled attacks and assaults 
of this kind, but they have vanquished the necessities of na- 
ture, have abolished their tyranny, and levelled their citadel 
with the ground. Although you have gained innumerable 
palms in your perpetual combats with demons, yet you have 
received no wound; but have stood unhurt in the thickest 
showers of arrows. The weapons which have been hurled at 
you have rebounded back upon your assailants. And these 
things are so, that you may be revenged upon your enemies, 
by the same evils which they inflict upon you; and that by the 
same snares which they prepare for you, they may be discom- 
fited who thus declare war against you : having in their wicked- 
ness laid the best foundation of your increasing glory. You 
yourself, who by your own clear knowledge and experience of 
these things, well know their force, very fitly denominate them 
a mere idle tale. 6 And why, I pray, may you not call them 
a tale, since though you have a mortal body, yet you despise 
death, as men are in haste to leave a foreign, and return to 
their own country. While labouring under the most painful 
disease, you nevertheless live more happily than those who 
are in the best health, and soundest state of body ; for you are 
neither liable to be cast down by contumely, nor elated by 
glory and honour; — that condition, which has been the cause 
of innumerable ills to many, even of those who, after acquiring 
distinction, in the priestly office, in which they have lived to 
hoary age, have here met their ruin, and become a common 
spectacle of derision to the ill-disposed. 7 

But to you, who are a woman, and have with a very 
delicate frame, borne up against so many and so severe as- 
saults, no such catastrophe has happened ; you have indeed 

6 Tlclvtcl kcli avTrj eidvla koXcoq, /cat ry 7rnpa rrjv aiaOrjcriv £xov<ra, eiKOTug 
livdov airavTa ravra KaXtig. 

7 FaVTEvQev (oXicrOov, kcu kolvov TrpoKtivrai toiq fiovXofievotg Kojfi&dtw 
Starpov. 



486 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

been the means of preserving others from it. Others, when 
advanced but a little way in this path of trial, not even be- 
yond the preludes of their conflicts, just, if I may so say, 
starting from the barriers, have been disheartened, and re- 
tired from the contest. But you, on numberless occasions, 
doubling the farthest terminus, have won the palm in every 
race ; evincing yourself conqueror in every species and variety 
of contention. And well have you deserved the palm. For 
these contests depend not on age or bodily perfection, but on the 
mind alone; and on ardour and activity in the cause of virtue. 
In this cause have women obtained a crown, while men have 
fallen to the ground. In such, have the young and tender 
acquired renown, while their elders have been covered with 
shame and ignominy. In every case it is just to give the ad- 
miration due to those who are bent on the pursuit of virtue ; 
but principally to those, who when numberless others give it 
up, still persevere in their efforts to attain it. On this account, 
therefore, it is right and reasonable to look to you w 7 ith admi- 
ration ; since when so many men, so many women, so many 
of advanced age, who have been in great esteem for their vir- 
tues, have turned their backs, and fallen prostrate in the sight 
of all, not from the violence of the combat, not from the sharp 
assaults of the enemy, but have fallen, even before the fight, 
conquered and routed before the conflict begun ; you, on the 
contrary, after so many battles and combats with so many 
evils, are neither broken nor wearied out, but have increased 
in courage, strength, and resolution, in proportion as your 
contests have been multiplied. The memory of what you 
with so much glory have achieved, is to you the source and 
spring of zeal and enterprise, and to us of joy, exultation, and 
delight. Nor shall I cease to repeat and carry about with 
me this subject of rejoicing. Wherefore, if my absence gives 
you uneasiness, surely great consolation is at hand, when you 
think on your great achievements ; while I also, from time to 
time, though there is a great distance between us, draw com- 
fort and refreshment from reflecting on your elevation of 
soul. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONiUS APOLLINARIS. 487 



TO RUFFINUS. 



Often have I desired to write to you, my very venerable 
Lord, because I love, vehemently love you. And both of my 
desire to write to you, and of the love I bear you, you are well 
assured. One of these facts is dependent on inclination only; 
the other is not in our own breasts. To love you, is an act of 
the will, but not so is it with the act of writing to you, which 
must yield to the difficulties of the way that lies between us, 
and the season of the year. One I do without pause or in- 
terruption, the other when circumstances will permit. But I 
correct myself — I do this act also perpetually. For although 
I do not always write with paper and ink, but with my will and 
mind, I am always writing. This is the nature and character 
of sincere affection. 

JOHN, TO SEVERUS PRESBYTER. FROM CUCUSUS. 

Although I dwell in a most desolate place, I have never- 
theless often written to you, and I never cease to enquire after 
your health, of all who come from you to us. But what can 
be the cause I know not, that loving me as you do, so ardently, 
and having it in your power to find persons to take charge of 
your letters, you still maintain so long a silence. But as I am 
perfectly persuaded of the fervour and sincerity of that affec- 
tion for me which you have always professed, I am supported 
by that assurance, long as your silence has been. My earnest 
wish, indeed, is to have letters often from you, to inform me of 
your welfare. And instead of hearing of this from the reports 
of others, to have the account from your own tongue, and your 
own hand. Wherefore, my most reverend and respected friend, 
I beseech you to do what you know will be so great a gratifi- 
cation to me. As to myself, whether you hear from me or not, 
be assured that you never ate out of my remembrance, and 
that I never cease to cherish that attachment to you of which, 
wherever my lot has been cast, I have always sought to give 



488 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

you a convincing proof; and whenever I do so, I rise in my 
self-esteem. 



JOHN TO CHALCEDIA. FROM CUCUSUS. 

For that reverence, honour, and sincere affection which you 
manifest towards me, may God reward you both in this life, 
and, that which is to come. I am perfectly sure of the kind 
zeal and interest which you have cherished for me from our 
first knowledge of each other : and although I am separated 
from you now by a long inter-space, and as well by reason of 
my desolate situation, perpetual perils, the frequent attacks 
of robbers, and the destitution of medical help, I am in a 
calamitous condition, none of these things hinder my bear- 
ing your sweet attention to me in grateful remembrance ; and 
that affection which I always felt for you and your family, I 
still preserve in a flourishing state, nor suffer it to wear out 
or decay through length of time or distance. Thus to en- 
dure is the character of true affection. But I pray and beseech 
you, by your prudence and your piety, to bear nobly whatever 
happens to you ; for I know you have walked amidst all the 
various kinds of temptation from early youth to the present 
moment ; I know, too, that you are able well to sustain the 
conflict of patience, in which you are so often tried, and 
whereby you have constructed for yourself, to be worn on a 
future day, an illustrious crown. But if that in which you 
are now placed exceeds all former trials, remember that your 
crown will be so much the greater; and such being the case, 
let not the sharpness of the conflict dismay you; but the 
more the surges swell, the more the storm increases, expect 
so much greater gain, and brighter and more abundant re- 
wards : nor are u the sufferings of this present time worthy 
to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed." The 
pleasures and the troubles of the life that now is, are tran- 
sitory, and will all vanish together, nor is there any thing 
certain or stable in them: they have only the quality of a 
shade, and depart almost as soon as they appear. 

As travellers in a foreign country, whether they pass through 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 489 

meads, or over rugged roads and places broken and abrupt, 
whatever be the scene around them, take no interest in it 
either pleasurable or painful, for they are only on their way 
through it, and not the citizens of it, but pressing forwards 
to their own country ; so I beseech you, neither attach your- 
self to the pleasures, nor allow yourself to sink under the 
troubles of this life ; but consider only how with strength and 
confidence, you may journey onwards to the common country 
of us all ; since this, at last, is our permanent place of rest ; 
here is our fixed, constant, and eternal happiness. All else 
is but the flower of the field, and vapour of smoke, and if 
there is anything, of which an idea can be formed, more 
valueless and vain. 



JOHN TO CASTUS, BIOPHANTUS, CYRIACUS, ANTIOCHtJS, PRES- 
BYTERS OF ANTIOCH. FROM CUCUSUS. 

I have seldom written to you in words, but in thought and 
sentiment continually and frequently. Do not then consider 
yourselves as receiving only so many epistles as come to you 
in ink and on paper, but as many as go forth from the will, 
and the purpose of my mind. For if you do but reckon 
them in this way, letters have been dispatched to you like 
showers of snow — in number. But if there is no one to be 
the bearer of them, my silence is not to be ascribed to my 
neglect, but to the difficulties of the circumstances in which 
I am placed. And this I say, that whether I write or am 
silent, you may think the same of the sentiments with which 
I regard you and your concerns. For wheresoever I am, I 
carry always about with me, the remembrance of you engraved 
on my mind. I acknowledge with great thankfulness the 
kindness so creditable to you, with which you have received 
the good monk, and rendered those more benevolently disposed 
towards him who were so unreasonably bent upon disputing 
and contending with him. I did not lightly affirm, nor out 
of any flattery towards you, that if myriads of waves were 
to be stirred up around you, your tranquillity would be 



490 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

undisturbed. For those who so easily prevent the ship- 
wreck of others, will doubtless keep themselves out of the 
danger of storms. Favour me with frequent reports of your 
welfare ; for you know how anxious I am for intelligence on 
this subject. Such, indeed, is the efficacy of your letters, 
when they bring me the news of your health, that by what- 
ever sorrows, troubles, vexations, and daily deaths I am beset, 
when I receive letters from you I am transported with joy, 
and gather from them the greatest consolation. It is the 
property and effect of letters, to refresh and revive, with such 
intelligence, those who are deprived by distance of personal 
communication. 

JOHN TO EULOGIUS, BISHOP. FROM CUCUSUS. 

t Although I am come to the extremity of the world; I cannot 
forget your love towards me, but in all my wanderings I carry 
the remembrance of it about with me, to such a degree have 
you become master of my affections. Since I have sat down 
in this the most desolate spot in our world, I never cease to dwell 
in mind upon your benignity, suavity, gentleness of manners, 
generosity of disposition, and, at the same time, your alacrity 
and zeal more burning than fire itself, and all your other eminent 
virtues ; and to cherish the memory of your valuable discourses, 
and to proclaim to all that rectitude of principle, and that steadi- 
ness of resolution, which you manifest towards those who make 
war upon the church, and fill the world with so many scandals 
against it. Though, in truth, this is a fact which does not 
call for my tongue to make it known ; since you, with a voice 
more distinct than a clarion, utter abroad the facts them- 
selves, through the whole east, and to those who live the far- 
thest off. For this I avow my gratitude, and call you blessed ; 
— I admire you, and exhort you earnestly to persevere in the 
manifestation of the same zeal. For when things are pro- 
ceeding against one's judgment, to hold fast one's integrity, 
and, when many are endeavouring to overthrow the church, to 
^avoid being perverted in one's opinions, is less valiant than to 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONTUS APOLLINARIS. 491 

encounter these things with a determined opposition- This 
is to apply, not a little and slight palliative, but a remedy 
the most vigorous and efficacious. And I think it cannot 
be doubted that, incited by the example of your goodness, 
the most reverend and pious prelates of Palestine will follow 
your steps ; for of this I am assured by experience, that by 
your uprightness of conduct, as the body is inseparably joined 
to the head, so you will hold them fastened and bound to 
yourself in the sweet bonds of love and charity; which I 
take to be the greatest display and proof that virtue can give 
of itself. 

JOHN TO THEODORA. FROM CUCUSUS. 

I am exhausted and worn out, and am dying a thousand 
deaths : and these matters they who bring you these letters 
are able of their own knowledge to make you accurately ac- 
quainted with, although they were a very short time with 
me, and I could enjoy but a very brief conversation with 
them, having been so enfeebled by continual attacks of fever, 
and, while under the influence of it, forced to pursue my 
journey night and day. During which time I was oppressed 
with heat, and wasted with watching; suffering under the pri- 
vation of all necessaries, as well as of all care and attendance. 
I have endured greater hardships than they who work in the 
mines, or are shut up in prisons. After tedious delays, at 
length, by what means I hardly know, I reached Csesarea, 
with great difficulty, as one driven into port by a storm. But 
the port could not repair the mischief to my health occasioned 
by the storm, so much injury had I received from past suffer- 
ings. It is true that when I entered Csesarea I revived a 
little ; that I got pure water to drink ; that I got bread that 
was neither musty nor dried up : nor did I any longer bathe 
in broken tubs; I did obtain a bath, such as it was; I was 
permitted to keep to my bed ; and I might add more to 
these particulars. But that I may not trouble you with any 
more of my story, I stop here, subjoining only this — do not 



492 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

cease to complain to those who profess to be interested in 
my welfare, that with so many loving and powerful friends I 
am unable to obtain what criminals do obtain — to be removed 
to a place less rigorous and less remote ; and that with a body 
incapable of endurance, and under a dread of the Isaurians, 
by whom every thing is attacked, I am denied so small and 
trifling a grace. But for this glory be rendered to God, and 
I cease not to glorify him for all things ; for ever blessed be 
his name. With respect to yourself, I must own myself 
astonished that, after having written to you a fourth and even 
a fifth letter, I have received only one from you during so 
long an interval; it cannot be a difficult task for you to 
write often to me. I do not say this with any intention to 
reproach you. For love is not the product of necessity, but 
of the free heart. But I do feel much hurt to think that I 
have so soon been forgotten by you ; that in so long a space 
of time you should have favoured me with only one letter. 
If, therefore, I am making a request which it is not trouble- 
some and burthensome to you to grant, let me beg you to do 
what is within your power, and depends wholly upon your 
will. I will not trouble you on any other account, that I may 
not, besides failing to obtain what I ask for, be considered 
importunate and wearisome. 

JOHN TO CARTERIUS, GOVERNOR. FROM CUCUSUS. 

A most marvellously desolate place is this Cucusus ! and yet 
it does not so depress me by its solitude, as it refreshes me by 
its quiet, and the freedom, which I enjoy in it, from all occu- 
pation. I am thus brought into this solitude as into a har- 
bour. After the evils of my voyage I draw my breath freely, 
and recover myself by this same tranquillity from what 
remained of the sickness and other sufferings I have under- 
gone. And these things I address to you, particularly because 
I know how kind an interest you take in my repose. For 
what you did for me in Constantinople, I can never forget, — 
how you endeavoured to repress those impetuous and senseless 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 493 

commotions, and how every thing was done by you that could 
be done on your part, that I might be placed in safety. These 
things I take care to publish wherever I go, being very grate- 
fully sensible, my very venerated lord, of your anxious care of 
me. But as it is not only a great gratification to me to be so 
affectionately regarded by you, but to enjoy your correspond- 
ence, by which I am certified of the state of your health, I 
pray you let me have this privilege, as it will be a great solace 
to me while I wear out life in this foreign land. 

JOHN TO HIS SISTER, FROM CUCUSUS. 

The law of nature has united us in love, and the same pains 
gave us birth. But yet not so much on that account as on 
another, which deserves still greater consideration, do I love 
and honour you, which is, that you regard the things of this 
present time as nothing worth ; that you dispel them from you 
as smoke; that you tread upon them as dust and dirt; and 
spread your light wings for your passage to Heaven ; and fur- 
ther, that neither your conjugal cares, nor your anxiety about 
your children's nurture, nor your household administrations, 
nor the troubles which they create, are able to interrupt or retard 
jrour course, but that all these things which might appear to 
be so many impediments in your way, are made use of by you 
as means of increasing the celerity of your flight ; and that 
poverty, which humiliates the high-minded of our sex, (for, 
as scripture says, poverty humbleth a man) is so far from being 
able to depress, that it exalts you. Such is the force of virtue, 
that it is entangled in none of those things which lie in its 
path, like spiders' webs, but dissipating all obstructions more 
easily than webs themselves, it turns everything to gain. I do 
not write this to you without a particular motive ; but because 
I think it probable you were much troubled as well by my de- 
parture, as by the commotion to which it gave occasion, I have 
thought myself called upon to write to you, considering that 
in the affairs of this world two ways lie before us, the strait 
one of virtue, and the broad one of vice ; though I know that 



494 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

you neither envy those who prosper in their sins, but rather 
bewail their folly, as knowing that their prosperity is only their 
passage to punishment; nor do you deem those unhappy who 
proceed by the narrow road, but pronounce them blessed, while 
they travel accompanied with virtue ; for their hard allotment 
in this present state, if joined with virtue, conducts and pre- 
pares them for honours and crowns. The rich man was not 
tormented, because he was without pity and humanity, but be- 
cause he abounded in wealth, and enjoyed a sumptuous table ; 
and Lazarus was crowned, because with much patience he 
endured the anguish of his ulcers, his want, his destitution, 
his abject and despised condition, and his exposure to be 
licked by the tongues of dogs. Although all those things 
were known to you without learning them from my letters, 
yet I thought it needful to bring them to your recollection, 
that you may not be thrown under the dominion of despon- 
dency by any misfortunes. Though I do not like to commit 
all I have to say to a letter, yet as I know how many troubles 
beset you, I could not forbear writing to you. While I am 
living in this foreign land, give me the great pleasure and de- 
light of hearing by your letters, that this my exhortation has 
prevailed with you, as much as I wish and desire it should ; 
and then, far as I am separated from you, I shall truly rejoice. 
Indeed, great as have been my sufferings, I shall lose the 
memory of them all, while I feel them to be thus rewarded ; 
and shall look with assurance for a speedy change for better 
things, indicated by this happy prelude. While you reason 
on these things in your own thoughts, suffer not your spirits 
to be cast down by these trials of your patience, but while 
you cheerfully apply yourself to the care of all your other 
children, now that an additional blessing has been granted 
you, bestow your tenderest care upon the fair Epiphanium, in 
educating her agreeably to God's will. For you know how 
great a blessing attends upon the right bringing up of chil- 
dren. It was for this that Abraham, amongst other things, 
obtained a good report ; by this was Job crowned ; and the 
blessed Paul is perpetually exhorting parents, saying, " Edu- 
cate your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." 



to the timp: of sidonius apollinarts. 495 

You have now a vacant period, by which you may disengage 
yourself from superfluous and importunate care and grief; a 
vacation which may be productive of great benefit ; and which 
may be the stock on which much virtuous fruit may grow, if 
you will improve it to the most advantage ; for I do not think I 
need write to you on the subject of the lady, our mother, since 
I well know that among other virtues, your duty to her is one 
which you mainly cherish, and that it has been a source of 
blessing to you. I doubt not that by your assiduities you render 
unnecessary the attendance of servants. But since it is a matter 
which I cannot but advert to in writing to you, I will remind 
you of what the blessed Paul says, " Honour your parents," 
adding, " which is the first commandment with promise." By 
such a conduct, you will earn many crowns, and fill me with 
the greatest pleasure. While I think on this, I shall forget 
all my sufferings. Comforted and refreshed by your behaviour 
in this respect, I shall think that I am virtually at home, 
passing my hours with you, and that all things are in a train 
correspondent to my wishes. 



With this pleasing epistle of Chrysostom to his only sister, 
I shall terminate the specimens taken from the writings of 
this eminent father. The whole of the published collection 
amounts to 242 ; all written from the dreary place of his 
exile, and during the last three years of his existence upon 
earth. From letters written under such circumstances, and 
from such an abode, it were unreasonable to expect a great 
variety of matter. One shade of melancholy rests upon them 
all ; but the melancholy of a mind adorned by learning, and 
cultivated by study. He bore his banishment, not indeed 
without occasional complaint, but, in general, with a philoso- 
phic firmness, which, if his behaviour be compared with that 
of Cicero, in similar circumstances, brings him before us in a 
light of unquestionable superiority. Still in these letters we 
do not perceive in their just and beautiful proportions, those 
supports under affliction, which we look for in a sainted father 
of the Christian church. There are not found in them any 



496 FROM THE TIME OF LTBANIUS 

distinct references to the Cross, or to the love and sympathy 
of that Divine Participator in human sorrows, who has beck- 
oned the weary and heavy-laden to come to his rest. If we 
do not find in Chrysostom too high an opinion of his own de- 
serts, we cannot but discover in his letters a tendency to claim 
the rewards of Heaven, on a title simply based on sufferings 
and persecutions. For the pleasures, riches, and honours of 
the world, he everywhere declares a magnanimous contempt ; 
but though he treats everything around him as vile, he seems 
hardly to see enough of his own interior, to recognize his na- 
tural corruption and need of pardon. Had he watched with 
a little more jealousy the movements of his own heart, and 
entertained a more rectified view of his own short-comings, 
had he laid his foundation more in spiritual knowledge, and 
studied more in the school of Christ, there would have been 
more of the Cross, and less of the crosier in his letters ; he 
would have talked more of gratitude than reward, and would 
have shewn himself more fully impressed with the solemn truth 
— that before a perfect God, no works of an imperfect being 
can merit acceptance, much less entitle to reward. 

The letters of Chrysostom bear so favourable a testimony fn 
behalf of his numerous correspondents, that we are almost in- 
duced to accept them as evidence of a preponderancy of Chris- 
tian virtue among the sacred orders of the church, in the time 
in which he lived, but a more general acquaintance with their 
style and character leads to a suspicion, that the language of 
commendation, conceived so frequently in the same identical 
terms, was rather the current form of compliment and courtesy 
than the expression of merited eulogy. The real history of 
the time, as it partly appears in the malicious and revengeful 
treatment experienced by Chrysostom, at the hands of the 
various dignitaries of the church, is demonstrative of the con- 
tentious, ambitious, and factious spirit by which Christendom 
was agitated and disgraced in the fourth century. 

It was this spirit which drove Chrysostom from Cucusus 
to Arabissus, and from Arabissus to Pityus, on the shore of 
the Pontic sea. In his way thither he came to Comana, where 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 497 

he was not permitted to repose, all-weary as he was, but was 
forced four miles forward to the Oratory of Basiliscus, who 
had been bishop of Comana, and had suffered martyrdom 
under Maximian. Here clothed, at his desire, in a white gar- 
ment, he received the Holy Eucharist, made his last prayer, 
and died with his usual doxology, the last utterance of his 
* golden mouth.' 8 



One of the most interesting and agreeable letter-writers of 
this period, was Synesius, who drew his first breath in the 
city of Cyrene, of which he pathetically laments the ruined 
state. 9 He himself carries back the series of his ancestors as 
high as Eurysthenes, the first Doric king of Sparta, and the 
fifth in lineal descent from Hercules ; which series was in- 
scribed in the public registers of Cyrene, a Lacedemonian 
colony. 10 He was bred as a Platonic philosopher, and was a 
scholar of the celebrated Hypatia, who was killed in Alexan- 
dria, in a tumult of the people ; and of whose short and inter- 
esting story, as related by the historian of the Decline and 
Fall, it is impossible not to take a little special notice. 

Hypatia, 11 the daughter of Theon, the mathematician, was 
initiated in her father's studies. Her learned comments have 
elucidated the geometry of Apollonius and Diophantus, and 
she publicly taught, both at Athens and Alexandria, the philo- 
sophy of Plato and Aristotle. In the bloom of beauty, and in 
the maturity of wisdom, the modest maid refused her lovers, 
and instructed her disciples. The persons most illustrious for 

8 He is said to have been of low stature, with a countenance of grave, 
thoughtful, but amiable expression. His head was large, his forehead broad, 
his cheeks sunken, his eyes deep in their sockets. His whole aspect was that 
of a mortified man, with his flesh subdued to the spirit, and his appetites 
under the control of the highest reason. 

9 IloXif EXXrjvig, TraXaiov ovofia Kai (TSfxvov, kcli ev wSr] fivpia tiov irakai 
<ro<pu)v. vvv 7Tev)]q teat KctTf](pr)G, kcci /uteya Epsnriov. Hepi fiaaik. p. 2. 

10 Synes. Ep. lvii. p. 197, edit. Petav. It is observed by Gibbon, that such 
a pure and illustrious pedigree of 1700 years, without adding the royal ances- 
tors of Hercules, cannot be equalled in the history of mankind. 

11 See Socrat. L. vii. c. 15, an-odvcravreg rs rt]v eaQijra o^paKotg. 

K K 



498 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

their rank or merit, were impatient to visit the female philo- 
sopher ; and Cyril beheld with a jealous eye the gorgeous 
train of horses and slaves, who crowded the door of her aca- 
demy. A rumour was spread among the Christians, that the 
daughter of Theon was the only obstacle to the reconciliation 
of the Prefect and the Archbishop, and that obstacle was 
speedily removed. On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, 
Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged 
to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter 
the reader, and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics : her 
flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells, and 
her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames. The just 
progress of inquiry and punishment was stopped by season- 
able gifts ; but the murder of Hypatia has imprinted an inde- 
lible stain on the character and religion of Cyril. 12 

After having spent a great part of his life in secular affairs, 
Synesius was converted, and made bishop of Ptolemais in 
410. It will appear by the first letter I shall produce, that 
he was unwilling to accept the charge, and that he was very 
candid and ingenuous in the avowal of his reasons, and of 
all the particulars of his life which in any way affected his 
qualifications for the sacred office to which he was invited by 
Theophilus, the Archbishop of Alexandria. He was not fully 
persuaded of the great truths of the Christian religion, and 
yet such was the laxity as to essentials in those days, to 
which many look for models and examples, that notwith- 
standing the candid admission by Synesius of the state of his 
theological convictions, he was urged and induced to become 

12 The historian says, " the religion of Cyril." I trust he did not mean the 
Christian religion. Cyril was the nephew of Theophilus, and is said to have 
accompanied his uncle to the Synod of the Oak. He long maintained the 
justness of the sentence pronounced by that Assembly against Chrysostom, 
though after an obstinate resistance, he yielded the point. He refused to listen 
to the entreaties of Atticus of Constantinople, and Isidore of Pelusium, but 
according to Nicephorus, L. xiv. c. 18, he at last yielded to the personal inter- 
cession of the Virgin. Yet Tillemont says, that in his last years he still mut- 
tered that John Chrysostom had been justly condemned. Mem. Eccl. Tom. 
xiv. 278, 282. 



to thp: time of sidontus apollinaris. 499 

the Bishop of Ptolemais ; a fact that reminds us of the case of 
St. Ambrose, who is said to have been constrained to accept the 
Archbishoprick of Milan, though but newly baptized, and "not 
having had time to study religion before his ordination." 13 

Synesius exercised the important office of Bishop of Ptole- 
mais during the space of twenty years, his life having termi- 
nated about the same time with that of St. Augustine ; and 
the acts of his sacred ministry bore testimony to the in- 
tegrity of his mind, and the firmness and humanity of his 
principles and feelings. The prognostics of this sensible and 
wise, and we may hope, faithful deportment, are, indeed, ob- 
servable in some of the earlier transactions of his life, and 
especially in the instructive oration which he pronounced, 
when at Constantinople, as deputy from Cyrene to the Emperor 
Arcadius ; whom he exhorted to revive the courage of his sub- 
jects by an example in his own person of manly virtue, to 
banish luxury from his court, to rouse the lazy citizen from 
his dream of pleasure, and to display the spirit of a Roman at 
the head of his indigenous troops. 

SYNESIUS TO HIS BROTHER. 

I should be an insensible man, were I not to return many 
thanks to the people of Ptolemais, for deeming me worthy of 
honours to which, for my own part, I do not think myself com- 
petent. It is my duty to consider, not so much the greatness 
of the office which is tendered to me, as my ability to dis- 
charge its duties. For, feeling myself a mere man, to be pro- 
moted to honours little less than divine, is a distinction which 
may be very gratifying in the acceptance to one who is fit for 
the undertaking, but to one who comes so far short of what 
the undertaking demands, the bitter disappointment of his 
hopes is the only probable result. It is no new fear of mine, 
but one which I have long entertained, that my receiving 
honour from man may be an infliction upon me for some sin 
against God. For, upon self-investigation, I find myself alto 

13 See Dupin, Cent. iv. 



500 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

gether unsuited to the gravity of the sacerdotal office. Let 
me make you acquainted then with what is passing in my 
mind, since* to none can I do this so well as to him who was 
brought up with me, and whom I hold so dear. For I pre- 
sume to think, that you will partake with me in all my cares, 
and my attainment of any good, or escape from any evil, is at 
all times the subject of your anxious thoughts. Hear then how 
matters stand with me, though, indeed, you must, for the most 
part, be already acquainted with them. I have taken upon 
me the light burthen of philosophy, and seem to myself 
hitherto to have sustained it well ; but having been praised by 
some as not altogether unsuccessful in this study, I am 
thought equal to greater things by those w r ho are no good 
judges of the qualifications of my mind. I fear then lest, 
being elated so far as to accept the honour, I should commit 
a double error, acting as if I thought myself above the profes- 
sion of philosophy, whilst I fall below the demands of the new 
situation proposed to me. For consider that between these 
two things I regularly divide my time, — amusement, and study. 
When I am studying, I am in privacy, especially if engaged in 
religious exercises ; but when I recreate myself, I am quite in 
public ; and the truth is, as you know, that when I rise from 
my books I am wholly given up to recreation. I fear, there- 
fore, I am unfitted, both by nature and by habit, for public 
cares. 

Now a priest ought to be a holy man, — one who should be 
utterly indisposed to any manner of amusement ; one who is 
garrisoned by ten thousand eyes, that he may live conform- 
ably to his profession ; which check upon him would avail 
little or nothing without a fitness in the man himself for what 
he has undertaken, without a spiritual discernment, and a 
superiority to all self-indulgence. In things relating to God 
he should not keep to himself, but impart, the benefit of his 
knowledge ; being a teacher of the law, and one who should 
pronounce its decisions : he must himself perform what is 
usually the work of many hands. He must do everybody's 
duties, and submit to everybody's accusations. Must he not 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 501 

necessarily then be a man of a most capacious mind, to bear 
so great an accumulation of cares, without being overwhelmed 
by them ; how otherwise can the sacred spark be kept alive 
in his soul, when such a variety of employments are distract- 
ing him? I well know that some men are equal to all this; 
and much do I admire their abilities, and esteem them to be 
men of a truly god-like cast, able, as they are, to interest them- 
selves in human affairs, without cutting themselves off from 
divine communion. As for myself, I feel that I cannot go to 
and fro in the city, without having my affections implicated 
in things that drag me to the earth, and bring on my soul 
more defilement than I can express. For to one who has 
long found himself sullied even by his family affairs, a slight 
accession greatly swells the amount. I feel a deficiency of 
strength. It is the unsoundness within me that makes me 
unequal to exterior things. I am far from being able to endure 
grief for conscience sake. As often as any one asks the ques- 
tion of me, I shrink not from explicitly declaring my opinion, 
that a bishop should be spotless himself, in an extraordinary 
and eminent degree, inasmuch as he has even to cleanse others 
from their spots. This it becomes me to confess in a letter 
written to a brother ; but undoubtedly many persons will read 
this epistle ; and, indeed, it is mainly for this reason that I 
have written it, in order that the matter may be clear to all 
men. For I am anxious, whatever the result may be, that I 
may stand free of blame before God and men, and especially 
before our father Theophilus. For, by laying all my case 
before him, and giving him an opportunity, by this full ex- 
posure of my circumstances, of judging for me, is not the 
weight of responsibility removed from me ? On me both 
God and the law, and the holy hand of Theophilus have be- 
stowed a wife. I declare, therefore, and protest before all 
men, that from this wife of mine I will not either entirely live 
apart, nor cohabit clandestinely with her, as a fornicator. 14 

14 The celibacy of the Clergy, though countenanced and regarded as a duty, 
by some of the Western Councils, as those of Elvira, Aries, and Tours, does not 
appear to have been generally or scrupulously observed The 33rd Canon of 



502 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANTUS 

For the one would be anything but holy, and the other any- 
thing but lawful. My wish and prayer is, that I may have a 
numerous and virtuous offspring. This one thing ought to 
be well understood by him who has the right of the appoint- 
ment. Let him be told this by his associates Paulus and 
Dionysius, who, as I understand, have been made presbyters 
by the people. Indeed there is no need to inform him of it, 
but to remind him of it: I shall have more to say to you, 
however, concerning him. But if all other impediments were 
of small consequence, who should settle this point? 

Again, it is difficult, if not wholly impossible, to shake 
opinions which have been established in the mind by demon- 
strative reasoning. You know that philosophy is in many 
instances opposed to the commonly received dogmas. I 
never can think it proper to admit that the soul comes into 
existence after the body : 15 nor will T say that the world and 

the Council of Elvira, held about the year 300, a. d. enjoined it, and it was 
decreed by the council of Aries in 340, that no man, encumbered with a wife, 
should be admitted into holy orders, unless he engaged to abstain from co- 
habitation. In the great Council of Nice, 825, Paphnutius, a man of dis- 
tinguished piety and virtue, who for his perseverance in the faith, had been 
deprived of one of his eyes, and was himself unmarried, prevailed to have 
the proposition, that persons married before ordination, should be forbidden to 
cohabit with their wives, rejected ; contending that marriage was honourable, 
and that the conjugal connexion was consistent with the chastity of the priestly 
character. Persuasitque concilio ne cujusmodi lex ferreretur, quse scortandi 
occasionem prseberet. The opinion of Paphnutius was applauded by the 
council, and the matter of celibacy was left to the free choice of the party. 
Still, however, towards the close of the fourth century, the clerical abstinence 
from marriage was in pretty general practice in the Churches of the west. 
Syricius issued a decree in 385, enjoining celibacy upon all priests and 
deacons. In 441, the Council of Orange decreed that those who did not with- 
draw from their wives, should be deposed ; and in two years afterwards, Pope 
Leo, called the Great, extended the law of celibacy, which had been confined 
to deacons and presbyters, to sub-deacons. This law was finally confirmed 
by Gregory, called the Great, in 591. An attempt made in the Council of 
Trent, to set the Clergy free from this odious and iniquitous restriction, was 
not attended with the success which it met with in the Council of Nice; though 
it was an article in the Interim of Charles V. 

15 It was a theological question whether the soul was ex traduce and propa- 
gated from the father to the son, by the natural course of generation, or was 



TO THE TIME OF SIDON1US APOLLINAKIS. 503 

other parts of the creation perish together. I think that the 
doctrine of the resurrection, which is publicly preached, is 
something sacred, and not a fit subject of discourse. I am 
far from falling in with the opinions of the vulgar; and I 
think that the philosophical mind, though it is its business 
to discern the truth, must yield occasionally to the necessity 
of falsifying. For the interior light bears the same relation 
to truth, as the natural eye to its objects, where its vision 
is obscured by a film : the spiritual vision requires a film 
between it and the truth, as the natural vision does between 
it and light, inasmuch as the eye would be injured by being 
exposed to too much brightness. As the dark is beneficial 
to those who have a defect in the eye, so, I think, that decep- 
tion is useful to the people, and the truth may be hurtful to 
those who are not strong enough to fix their vision upon 
objects that are very luminous. If the laws concerning the 
priesthood would allow these things to me, 1 could undertake 
the priesthood. For when at home, I act the part of a philo- 
sopher — when abroad, and teaching, I indulge in fiction. Not 
in any respect to disabuse their minds, but to suffer them to 
remain as they are, is what I propose to do. But if they say 
that they also are to be awakened, and that the people are to 
be as the priest in doctrines, I will not be the first to render 
myself transparent to all. For the people and philosophy, 
what have they to do with one another ? The truth of divine 
things ought not to be spoken out, 16 since the people require 



created, and came into existence after the body. Synesius, as it appears, held 
the former opinion. Tertullian was of the same opinion, to which also St. 
Augustine seemed to incline, with a considerable number of the western 
churches. Jerome says that the soul was created immediately, at the very 
instant it was united to the body. Com. in Eccl. c. 12, et Ep. 61, ad Pamm. 
Much time and paper were wasted upon these idle and presumptuous ques- 
tions by those who are called the Fathers of the Church. 

16 How it came to be a maxim with some of the Fathers, I might almost 
say of the Fathers in general, to use an economy and reserve in their commu- 
nication of divine things, one sees pretty clearly in this very important epistle 
of Synesius. The study of heathen philosophy, to which many of the Fathers 
and great Christian professors had devoted their early lives, had impressed on 



504 FROM THE TIME OF L1EANIUS 

a different mode of teaching. Though again and again I 
repeat that a wise man should neither argue nor be argued 
with when there is no necessity for it, yet when called to the 
priesthood I do not deem it right to profess opinions which I 
do not entertain. I call God and men to witness the truth 
of what I say. Truth is the special attribute of God, before 
whom I am desirous in all things to be blameless. In this 
one thing I will be quite sincere. Fond as I am of amuse- 
ment, insomuch that from my youth I have been blamed for 
an excessive and inordinate attachment to arms and horses, I 
should grieve indeed (for what should I suffer to see my 
favourite dogs unexercised in hunting, and my arrows worm- 
eaten), yet I will suffer martyrdom if God commands it. 
And as I am one who dislikes the cares of business, I shall 
feel uncomfortable at this change of habits; but I will bear 
this service of controversy and trouble, burthensome as it is, 
if I thereby fulfil my duty to God ; I will not dissemble my 
opinions; my mind and tongue shall not be at variance. Thus 
thinking, thus speaking, I think I shall do what is pleasing to 
God. I am unwilling to give occasion to its being said hereafter, 
that without letting my sentiments be known I caught at the 
appointment. But let the most devout father Theophilus, with 
this full knowledge of what my opinions are, dispose of me, 
informing me first of his determination. For he will either 

their minds that habit of secrecy and reserve which was characteristic of 
ancient lore, and continued to adhere to the schools even of the fourth century. 
Synesius had passed the early period of his life in secular employments, and 
being nobly born and bred, had received the fullest cultivation which was to 
be had in his day under the most renowned teachers of the popular learning ; 
and the qualities and habits by which he was characterised, when Theophilus 
on a sudden invited him to the episcopal dignity, and which he so ingenuously 
avows, may be taken as a specimen of the loose and insufficient grounds on 
which the election to high ecclesiastical stations too often proceeded at this 
sera of the Christian church. 

Gibbon's note upon this epistle brings both himself and Synesius fully into 
view. " He loved profane studies and profane sports ; he was incapable of 
supporting a life of celibacy ; he disbelieved the resurrection : and he refused 
to \>reach Jables to the people, unless he might be permitted to philosophize at 
home." 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLL1NARIS. 505 

leave me in my present situation philosophizing by myself, or 
he will leave himself no opportunity afterwards of passing 
judgment upon me, and of striking me out of the list of bishops. 
Every consideration is trifling in comparison with this point ; 
for I well know that the truth is most agreeable to God. I 
protest by your sacred head, and what is more, by God, the 
inspector of truth, I feel great distress of mind ; for how can I 
but hesitate when required to make a transition from one sort 
of life to another? If, then, when these things are made 
manifest, which I do not think proper to conceal, he to whom 
God has given the authority should still determine to enrol me 
amongst the bishops, I will submit to the necessity. I will 
receive it as a signification of the Divine will. I feel that 
if the emperor, or an evil spirit in the imperial form, were to 
lay the command upon me, I would incur the penalty of dis- 
obedience; but to the will of God I must implicitly submit. 
Unless, however, God admits me to be His minister, and that 
by some pre-intimation of his will, it behoves me to cleave to 
the truth, that most divine thing, and not by a line of conduct 
opposed to truth, such as all deception is, to enter, in a sinister 
way, into His service. Let the scholastics know these things, 
and report them to him. 

TO HIS BROTHER. 

I asked the young man who came to me about the Silphium, 
whether it was the product of your own gardening, or having 
received it as a gift, you made me a partaker of it. And upon 
my being informed that you had a garden which you cultivated 
yourself, and that it bore this fruit as well as all other kinds, 
I rejoiced on two accounts, — at the excellence of the herb 
itself, and the testimony it bears in favour of the spot. May 
you enjoy your all productive garden, and may you not get 
tired of watering your favourite beds ; which I hope may con- 
tinue to reward your pains, so that you may have the full use 
of them yourself, and be able to send to me what the seasons 
produce. 



506 FROM THE TIME OF LIB A NI US 



TO HIS BROTHER. 

I have neither ass, nor mule, nor horse, all having been sent 
to grass, if any of which had been at hand, I should have come 
to you, my dearest friend. I was very desirous to come to you 
on foot, and perhaps I should have been able, but my people 
were against my setting out, lest I should delay those who 
were going to meet you. However that might be, they certainly 
thought themselves so very wise, and to have so much judg- 
ment, that they considered themselves more able, than I was 
myself, to determine what I ought to do. They, forsooth, con- 
sidered that my proceedings were to be suspended upon their 
wise decisions, and compelled me to be governed by the pru- 
dence of others rather than by my own counsel. They over- 
came me, however, not by their advice, but by main force, 
and would not permit me to go forth, seizing me by my cloak. 
What then remains to me but to give you a letter instead of 
myself. By which I embrace you, and ask therefore some 
importations from Ptolemais; I mean the news which you are 
probably able to send me from head quarters, and especially 
of some great enormity in the West which is generally talked 
of; for you know that whether this thing has happened or not, 
is a matter of great interest to me. If, therefore, you will send 
me a letter distinctly recounting these matters, I will remain 
where I am ; if otherwise, you will have to complain of my 
undertaking the journey on foot. 

TO THE SAME. 

Do you wonder, then, you who live in sultry Phycus, that you 
suffer with ague and fever; on the contrary, one ought to 
wonder if you were in a better state of body than what the 
heat of the climate tends to produce. But you may, if you 
please, come to us, with the permission of God, and recruit. 
your health ; changing the air which is corrupted by the 
marshy vapour; and changing that bitter tepid water which is 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINAKIS. 507 

altogether stagnant, or as one may say, dead. What luxury 
can there be in lying along on the sea-shore sand, which is 
the only place you have for repose ; for where else can you 
turn yourself? Here you can sit under the shade of a tree, 
and if you dislike your situation, you can change from tree to 
tree, and from grove to grove ; and may step over the little 
running rivulet. How sweet is that zephyr that gently stirs 
the boughs j how various are the notes of the birds, and the 
colours of the flowers, and the herbage of the meadows, partly 
produced by cultivation, and partly the boon of nature. All 
things here regale you by their odours. Here are the juices of 
a healthy soil. The grotto of the nymphs I will not praise. 
To do it justice needs a Theocritus. I might say many other 
things in its favour. 

TO PYLEMENES. 

I have received your letter in which you have blamed fortune 
for not having dealt with you more kindly. Cease to do this, 
my dearest friend, for it does not become you to complain, but 
rather to accept consolation. You are welcome, whilst you 
are thus circumstanced, to come and live with me, where you 
will find a brother's house. I am not rich, my good friend, 
but I have quite a sufficiency for Pylsemenes and myself; and 
if I have you with me, I shall become, perhaps, the richer, 
with the help of your experience. Others who have set out 
with no greater advantages, have risen above a mediocrity of 
wealth ; but I am a bad economist. However, my patrimony 
hitherto furnishes (so as to admit of the most complete ex- 
emption from anxiety) enough, at least, to feed a philosopher, 
(count that no contemptible provision), and one too who brings 
with him the gift of forethought. 17 Act, then, as I have recom- 
mended you in this case, unless indeed in the meanwhile your 

17 Such, upon consideration, appears to be the author's meaning in the 
passage. His words are, AXka rtwg avTt^ei, /ecu ttqoq rr\v aKpi(3e^aTt]v a/x£- 
Xsiav, ra Trarpoja a §)} dvvarai fioatctiv <pikoGo<pov, /.*»? ra rvxovra rjya, 7rpo<x- 
Xapovra Kai -npovotav. 



508 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

prospects have become brighter. And consider again how 
Heraclea was restored from its fallen state. I have not written 
letters to my usual correspondents on account of the present 
state of the times. But lately I wrote to all, giving a whole 
packet of letters to Diogenes, who is my cousin. If, then, he 
has been successful in his search for you, for seek you I know 
he did, he has certainly delivered you the packet, for there was 
no direction ; if not, ask the pilot to point the young man 
out to you ; and when you have received the letters, distribute 
them to the persons addressed. The persons to whom T am 
most desirous to convey my salutations are our father Proclus, 
Trypho, who was a magistrate in our neighbourhood, and 
Simplicius, both a good man and a good magistrate, and a 
friend of mine. Give him the letter as soon as you meet with 
him, and make your use of the man ; for it is well to pass 
your leisure with a soldier of poetical talent. I have by me 
some fine ostriches, the produce of my own peaceful hunting 
expeditions ; but I could not send them by sea through war- 
like armaments. And there was no other production of our 
coasts which I could put on ship-board. Wine, therefore, 
alone, is the cargo. Of oil, I protest by your precious head, 
they have not even a vial-full to carry to you. Receive then 
so many sextarii of wine, and to receive them, you have only 
to give an order to Julius. I must repeat, for fear it should 
slip you, I have written to our father Proclus, and have sent 
these things. Let him receive the letter from you, and the 
wine from Julius. For golden Trypho, (for I must be in- 
dulged even in these matters, with a little humour and 
Gorgias-like rhetoric) I have prepared luxurious gifts, 18 a 
quantity of the gum of Silphium ; for this is one of the good 
things Cyrene furnishes. I could not, however, send it now, 
but I will forward it in another vessel, when I shall send you 
and him the ostriches, but the oil separately. 

18 Toviptovra, a play upon the name Trypho. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLI MARIS. 509 



SYNESIUS TO HERCULIANUS. 

I heard, the other day, an eloquent man, holding forth in 
praise of the advantages of epistolary writings. This master 
of words, who possesses a surprising volubility, chose this for 
his subject. He descanted much in its praise on many other 
accounts, but principally that it brought consolation to dis- 
appointed lovers, as it made the absent appear to be in each 
other's company ; and satisfied the desire of the soul by the 
semblance of conversation. On this account he lauded to the 
skies the inventor of letters, and maintained that it was too 
good to have proceeded from any man, but was a gift of God 
to raan. I am now, therefore, turning to use this sacred gift 
of God. And as I am not able to converse with him with whom 
it would be a pleasure to converse, being deprived, I say, of 
that opportunity, I will often avail myself of this power of cor- 
responding with him. As far as it is possible, I am with you, 
and give a loose to my playful moods. If it is not too severe 
to say so, you have separated yourself as much in mind as in 
place; and if you persist in withdrawing yourself from those 
who love you with the most inviolable and unfeigned affection, 
you will imitate the swallows, who, whilst they dwell among 
men as in friendship with them, are talkative enough, but 
when they go away from them are silent. So much for human 
intercourse and accusations. But if you are for bringing to- 
gether persons who have been hitherto at a distance, by force 
of philosophy, considering that what is essentially good is the 
real friend of man, and that you can only hear that one 
essential good from the mind speaking, I will no longer im- 
pute your silence to a proud forgetfulness of me ; but I con- 
gratulate you upon your thus philosophizing, and repudiating 
all low and little things, bringing that which is the better part 
of your own nature into commerce with that which is the better 
part of mine. May you maintain this character, thou best of 
men, and my truly beloved brother. 



510 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 



TO DOMETIANUS, SCHOLASTICUS. 

Although I have been well assured by your actions, that 
your admirable disposition delights in the kind offices of 
humanity, and in holding out the hand of help to those who 
need it; yet I cannot forbear making a strong appeal to 
your benevolence in the case I am about to mention, being 
minded to urge the steed on the plain, as the proverb ex- 
presses it. For now you are called upon for a proof of your 
philanthropy, more than on former occasions, as an object of 
more than usual distress is now about to claim your assis- 
tance. It is a woman, an afflicted woman, suffering, together 
with her orphan boy. Who it is that has done her -this 
injury, and all the circumstances of the case, your kind and 
charitable self will learn from her own mouth. Exert yourself, 
therefore, my admirable friend, in defence of this woman, — 
because such an act will be honourable in itself, — because it 
will be creditable to you, — and because it will give me plea- 
sure. I shall be a sharer with you in the good work; for she 
is a kinswoman of mine, and has been well educated with us 
by a wise and virtuous mother. 

TO THE SAME. 

The cause of right and justice calls for helpers; and may 
happiness be the lot of those who bring assistance to that 
cause, and who are fellow-labourers with those who are earnest 
in it. I have chosen you for this post of defence, to maintain 
it by your intelligence and skill. It is my duty to do as much 
for all as I am able ; only furnish me with means. By thus 
proceeding you will experience my friendship, which you shall 
have no reason to blame yourself for having acquired, nor 
will any, perhaps, deem it an acquisition to be despised. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONFUS APOLLINARIS. 511 

Before we take our leave of Synesius, it would be unfair to 
his memory not to speak of his character as greatly distin- 
guished among the best and brightest ornaments of the fourth 
century. His conversion to Christianity was no sudden 
change produced by interest or ambition, as hfs mind before 
that event had long been conversant with theology and philo- 
sophy, in all the forms and colours with which the schools 
had invested them in that disputatious sera. His researches 
in philosophy were recommended and adorned no less by the 
polite attainments to which they were associated, than by the 
modesty and manly grace which accompanied their display in 
the commerce of life. His epistles bear the impress of quali- 
ties far above the tone and bearing of the ecclesiastics of the 
age in which he lived ; and it would be difficult to show among 
the familiar letters of any period, either ancient or modern, 
more truth of feeling, more raciness of expression, and more of 
the play of vivacity, than in the part borne by Synesius in his 
correspondence with his friends. He was an accomplished 
gentleman of the fourth century, with a mind on a level with 
his high descent, and at an equal distance from sacerdotal 
haughtiness and monkish humility. His avocations as a 
scholar and man of science appear to have impaired his for- 
tune ; yet no considerations of ease could deter him from the 
frank avowal of opinions that seemed to be, and ought to have 
been, a bar to his preferment. On his elevation, however, to 
the throne of episcopacy, he was fully alive to the responsibi- 
lity of the charge, and resolute in the administration of its 
duties. In the annals of faction and persecution, or the un- 
charitable strife of controversy, the name of Synesius is no- 
where heard : it was only in a contest with crime and cruelty 
that he wielded the weapons of the sanctuary, and tried the 
efficacy of its spiritual thunder in a combat with secular 
authority. Andronicus, a provincial governor, whose power 
in Cyrene and Ptolemais had been illegally obtained, had 
availed himself of it to give full scope to the ferocity of his 
temper. To an abandoned career of rapine and oppression he 
had added the guilt of sacrilege ; and Synesius, after a fruit- 



512 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

less effort to put a stop to his outrages by remonstrance and 
menace, proceeded to pronounce against him the final sentence 
of excommunication ; which placed him in the state of an 
outcast from all Christian commerce and society. The sen- 
tence was supported and enforced by the imperial edicts, and 
the humbled culprit was reduced to implore forgiveness, and 
to purchase his pardon by a prostrate humiliation. Thus 
impelled by the course of events, Synesius, the most eminent 
among those to whom in these times the unsettled authority 
of the Church was entrusted, for his humanity and modera- 
tion, furnished one of the precedents out of which her usurpa- 
tions grew, and gradually expanded, till they reached their 
maturity in papal domination. 

That he possessed a heart of caressing sympathy and kind- 
ness, appears from many of his letters, but especially from 
those to his brother, to whom he seems to have been tenderly 
attached; and to Olympius, one of his philosophical friends. 
He thus recommends his friend Gerontius to his brother : " I 
have sent a letter by the excellent Gerontius to you, my dear 
and precious brother, to give him a first introduction to you. 
Perhaps you will pay him attention, in the first instance, for 
my sake, but when you have had experience of him, you will 
esteem and value him for his own sake." 

To Olympius he thus writes, " When I read your letter, in 
which you tell me of your illness, at the commencement, I was 
greatly alarmed ; but as I read on, I took comfort. The 
danger at first seemed very threatening, but you soon gave me 
better prospects. As to the things you wished me to send or 
convey to you, all shall be sent and conveyed. There is no 
need for me to write to tell you what can or cannot be done, 
the gift will speak for itself. May you long live in good 
health and in the favour of God, my dear friend. It is my 
earnest wish that we may be enabled to enjoy each other's 
society ; and that you may not be summoned away before we 
shall be able to come together ; but if God determines other- 
wise, remember your absent friend. You may easily find 
better men than Synesius, but many who love you better you 
will not so easily find." 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 513 

Another letter to his brother may be produced as a specimen 
of his urbanity and friendliness of disposition : "The lengthi- 
ness of an epistle shows that it is put into the hands of a bearer 
who is unconcerned about the writer ; but the excellent Acacius 
knows my whole mind. He will tell you even more than he 
knows from me, for he loves you much, and has a tongue that 
gives to plain facts more than their ordinary interest, so that I 
send you a letter more for the sake of a customary greeting, than 
because there is any need of one. Still, however, there is this 
purpose answered by a letter to you, to give you news of your 
son, Dioscorius, of his good health, and how he reads, and 
how applies to his books. We have given to him a little frater- 
nity of associates, having added to Hesychius a pair of 
brothers, whom may God prosper for their own sakes, for the 
sake of those who are under the same paternal roof, for the 
sake of the rest of their family, and for the sake of their 
native country." 

So afFeeting is the tragedy of Hypatia's death, that we 
follow with a feeling of sadness the pen of Synesius, when he 
writes to the accomplished and unhappy lady to procure for 
him a hydroscope, describing its construction and use. The 
genius and temperament which in a period of such disorder 
and faction found solace and refreshment in enquiries so pure 
and improving, associate the names of Hypatia and Synesius 
with what we dwell upon with the mellowest interest in the 
thoughts of the past. 

I am not asking of the reader an unqualified approbation 
of this amiable .and distinguished man. He was a great ad- 
mirer, and almost a disciple of the Pythagorean school, and 
imported from it those maxims of secrecy and suppression by 
which it was so particularized. Of the reserve of the Pytha- 
gorean mystics in the economy of their arcana, few in any 
age could with reason complain; but reserve in the com- 
munication of saving truths is a gross wrong done to humanity. 
Such a mode of dispensing Christian knowledge is to inter- 
cept the beams of the Sun of righteousness, to render darker 
still the glass through which we see so darkly, and to inter- 
im L 



514 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

pose a veil of human texture between the sinner and the 
sinner's hope. There is, however, good reason to conclude 
that Synesius, after entering into the episcopal office, acquired 
clearer and correcter views of some of those theological points 
on which his mind had been sceptical or unsettled, as we find 
him very anxious and active in removing the doubts of a 
friend on the same subjects ; though still it is probable that, 
like all the luminaries of the church in the fourth century, 
especially those who were late converts to Christianity, he 
failed in that entire reliance on the Saviour's blood, and the 
exclusive all-sufficiency of his merits, which acknowledges 
the full completion of the work of mercy in accomplishing our 
redemption. 

Whether the letter importing to be sent from Synesius to 
Hypatia, and following her to the country beyond the grave, 15 
be the genuine production of the reputed writer, may be open 
to some doubt, but it certainly does not comport with the 
serious views and just sentiments of the believer taught in 
the school of Christ. Whatever may be the oblivious state 
of the inhabitants of that nether world, the letter-writer de- 
clares his resolution always to remember his dear tutoress, 
Hypatia; and after dwelling upon the deplorable state of 
things around him, which threatened him hourly with de- 
struction, declares his determination to migrate from the place 
where the tombs of his ancestors still made the locality dear 
to him. 



15 The sentiments of this letter are little in conformity either with the Chris- 
tianity or philosophy of the mind of Synesius, and are much in the spirit of 
those pretty heathen hendecasyllables of which I do not know the author. 

Occidit mea cara Pancharilla: 

Occidit mea lux, meumque sidus ; 

Et nunc per vacuas domos silentum 

Comes pallidulis vagatur umbris. 

Sed caram sequar ; arboresque ut alta 

Sub tellure suos agunt amores, 

Et radicibus implicantur imis : 

Sic nos consociabimur sepulti, 

Et vivis erimus beatiores. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 515 

The series of letter-writers among the Greek fathers of the 
church, of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century, 
seem properly to close with Isidore of Pelusium, who has left 
us more letters than any other writer who may be classed among 
the ancients. Sixtus Senensis, in his Sacra Bibliotheca, has 
made the number to amount to ten thousand, following what 
appeared to be the statement of Nicephorus, in the fourteenth 
book, c. 53, of his Ecclesiastical History, but which has, with 
great probability, been imputed to an error in the use of the 
Greek numerals, the letter t being inserted instead of y. The 
aggregate number which has been brought to light is, accord- 
ing to Bellarmin, three thousand one hundred and thirteen. 19 
Though, according to others, only two thousand and twelve 
are extant. There have been several distinguished men bear- 
ing the name of Isidore ; but the Greek father, with whom we 
are concerned, was a presbyter, or the abbot of a monastery 
at Pelusium, a city of Egypt, near one of the mouths of the 
Nile, called the Pelusiacum Ostium. He was a disciple of 
John Chrysostom, and attracted great veneration by his sanc- 
tity and ascetic abstinence. Suidas calls him a Pelusiote 
Presbyter, remarkable for his eloquence and piety, as well as 
a philosopher and rhetorician, and the author of three thousand 
epistles, containing chiefly interpretations of the Holy Scrip- 
tures. He so macerated his flesh by study, and treasured his 
mind with so vast a fund of divine wisdom, that he seemed, 
says Evagrius, to live an angelic life upon earth. We find his 
name among the saints in the Roman and Greek calendars. 
Isidore has quoted from all, or nearly all, of the canonical 
books of the Old and New Testament, and has thrown upon 
both considerable light. Dr. Heumann, of Gottingen, who 
wrote a dissertation on the works of this father, has given it 



19 The three persons to whose researches we owe principally the epistles of 
Isidore of Pelusium, were Jac. Billius, Conrad. Rittershusius, and Andreas 
Schottus. The publication before me is in one volume folio, consisting of five 
books, the three first edited and interpreted by Billius, the fourth by Ritter- 
shusius, and the fifth by Schottus. 



516 FROM THE TIME OF LIBAN1US 

as his opinion, that most of Isidore's epistles were fictitious, 
i. e. not written to real persons, but used as channels for 
conveying his disquisitions and remarks ; and in Lardner's 
judgment Heumann supports his opinion with forcible reasons. 
These letters are written with great vivacity, and contain more 
sound observations and precepts than can be found, perhaps, 
in any other productions of the fourth or fifth century. His 
matter is always perspicuous, and his meaning never distorted 
by sophistical or artificial phraseology. He was a disciple of 
Chrysostom and well responded to the precepts of the master. 
If the golden-mouthed presbyter deserved the inflated enco- 
miums of the sophists of Antioch, in the presbyter or abbot of 
Pelusium a glimpse at least was afforded of the fairest day of 
Athenian eloquence. His diction was at once pure and elegant, 
and may justly be reckoned among those examples which 
attested the wonderful durability of the Greek language, and 
its struggles for life amidst the dying literature of the lower 
empire. 20 

The letters of Isidore of Pelusium are letters rather in name 
and form than in character and substance, being principally 
short treatises or disquisitions on scriptural points, and as 
they seem, at least for the most part, to be written, as Dr. 
Heumann supposes, to fictitious persons, they are barely within 
the scope of this work ; but we find among them so many 
just, amiable, and edifying epistles, whether real or feigned, 
that to give them no place among our specimens of ancient 

20 The Romans, with all their extent of dominion, and all the zeal thpy 
shewed for their language, were very unsuccessful on that head. The Greeks 
set out before them, and, I might say, survived them, for we have many authors 
in Greek who wrote with considerable purity and elegance, even after the other 
language had become in a manner barbarous. There is less dissonance or 
disagreement between the Greek of the first ages and the last, between the 
writers of the fourth century before the Christian sera, and the fourth or fifth 
century after it, than there is between two Roman authors of the same century. 
We are assured by Cicero, that there were lawyers who lived almost up to the 
middle period between him and the XII Tables, who confessed they did not 
understand those Tables. See Tayl. Elem. of Civil Law, 510. See also Cic. 
de Leg. 1. ii. s. xxiii. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 517 

letter-writing would be to deny them what is due to their merit 
and value. It is thus he himself writes on the subject of epis- 
tolary composition. 

TO ORPHELIUS, THE GRAMMARIAN. 

The style of an epistle ought not to be altogether unstudied 
and unadorned ; nor should it be over-polished and exquisite 
in its diction. The one character is homely and ungraceful ; 
the other is meretricious and affected. It admits a chaste 
degree of ornament, which is all that is wanted for appear- 
ance or effect. 



TO JEMILIANUS AND PELAGIUS, TWO DEACONS, WHO WERE 
AT VARIANCE WITH EACH OTHER. 

That a soothing and seasonable speech has the power some- 
times, like a particular medicine, of allaying an angry feeling, 
boiling in the interior of a man, I dare affirm ; but whether 
in any thing I can say there exists a healing power that will 
be efficacious in the present instance, of that I am not so well 
assured. If I shall happily accomplish this object, I shall 
have done well ; if I fail, I shall deplore the event, but I shall 
hold myself absolved from blame. Since your bitter conten- 
tion has reached, as they say, to heaven, it has not only inflicted 
wounds on yourselves, but on others also. I have it at heart, if 
possible, to put an end to it, and make you friends again. But 
if this, as some assure me, cannot possibly at present be brought 
about, yet certainly, by maintaining silence, you may enervate 
the force of this hostility ; or you may desist, at least, from 
aggravating it by angry words, and such as had better have 
never been uttered. For if you can be prevailed upon to sup- 
press these unwarrantable speeches against each other, your 
quarrel by little and little may soften of itself, and gradually 
become extinguished and disappear, from having nothing to 
excite it; just as when the progress of a disorder is arrested, 
so that the sick man is stationary, an amendment generally 



518 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

begins. In the acutest diseases, if the patient's condition 
remains in an unaltered state, without inclining to better or 
worse, it is thought to be a good sign ; so in the grievous 
malady with which you both are afflicted, (for you must not 
think yourselves in any other state than that of severe disease, 
while you are thus affected toward each other) the inactivity 
of the disorder will be the symptom of convalescence. Where- 
fore, if you can resolve to banish all discord from between 
you, I shall be well pleased ; but if you can only stop its 
progress and suspend its activity, I shall not despair of better 
things ; and shall think that my advice to you to restrain 
your mutual invectives has not been thrown away. 

TO MART1NIANUS, PRESBYTER, 

Do not, my excellent friend, strive after wealth, which is the 
parent of pride and arrogance, brings upon us a band of 
destructive pleasures, is the architect and fabricator of every 
evil, and alienates us from the love of God ; but cultivate 
virtue, which turns us away from all the evils of the world. 
If it demands of us much sweat und labour, do not avoid it on 
that account ; but embrace it for that very reason ; for remem- 
ber, that in other things, that which is the fruit of sweat and 
labour, 21 even where it is little in itself, becomes the object of 
our ardent desire ; whereas that which is easily acquired, or 
comes of its own accord, is despised by us, however great in 
itself. 

TO THEODOSIUS, BISHOP. 

I wish Eusebius would learn, as he is set over the church at 
Pelusium, what a church really is. For it is most absurd, 
and of the worst consequence, that without this knowledge, 
he should imagine himself qualified to be a bishop. Now 



21 TijQ 8 y apirjjQ \dpioTci S'foi TTQOTrapoiBtv tStjieav 
AOavaroi' jxaicpoQ $f icai opQiog oipog en' avTrjv, 
Kai rptjxvQ to irpo)Tov : k. t X. Hesiod. Oper. et Dies, 1. 289. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 519 

that a church is properly an assembly of holy men, having a 
sound faith, and the correctest moral discipline, is the view 
entertained of it by all wise men. From the want of well 
understanding this, Eusebius is doing what must tend to over- 
turn the true church, and give scandal to many. It is true, 
he is busy about the building of the temple, but at the same 
time he is despoiling it of its great ornament, by expelling 
from it zealous and serious men. No one is ignorant of the 
pains he takes to decorate the building with variegated 
marble: but if he well understood that the church is one 
thing, and the structure of the church another, that the one 
is composed of holy and harmless spirits, while wood and 
stone are the materials of the other, I think he would desist 
from his hostility to the one, while he is bestowing superfluous 
ornament on the other. For it was not to contemplate walls, 
but living souls, that the King of Heaven visited us here 
below. But if he still declares himself ignorant of what I 
mean, though it be as clear as the light to all who are not in 
a state of the most gross insensibility, I will try to make 
myself understood by examples. As the altar is one thing, 
and the sacrifice another ; as the censer is one thing, and the 
incense another ; as the council-chamber is one thing, and 
the council another, the one signifying the place of assembling, 
the other the persons meeting for consultation, to whom are 
committed questions of public danger and safety, the same is 
the difference between the temple and the church. But if he 
professes not to understand even this, let him be told for his 
better information, that in the days of the apostles, when the 
church abounded in spiritual graces, and shone forth in all 
the lustre of its discipline, there were no Christian temples at 
all. But in our times, unnecessary ornaments are bestowed 
on our temples, while the church is mocked by neglect, to use 
no stronger terms. Now if the choice lay with me, I would 
certainly choose rather to live in times in which the temples 
were not thus expensively adorned, but the church was 
encircled with divine and heavenly graces, than in times 
when the fabrics themselves are adorned with all kinds 



520 FROM THE TIME OF LIBAMUS 

of marble, and the church left naked and destitute of spiritual 
graces. 



TO ELIAS AND DOROTHEUS, INTRUSTED WITH THE MANAGE- 
MENT OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 

I declare myself the friend of both of you. You both send 
for me, but I will come to neither of you, to take up the cause 
of either against the other ; as I see no reason for your present 
hostile disagreement. I will not come to benefit one at the 
expense of the other. But if you will both do that which it be- 
comes both to do : — if you will lay aside this implacable enmity, 
and turn your views towards peace, I will come, not to assist 
one against the other, but to unite you both again in the 
bond of peace and amity. 

TO PALLADIUS. 

My advice to you is, neither to turn an adverse look, nor raise 
an adverse voice against the Divine Oracles. But even before 
you hear what is commanded, pledge yourself to the perform- 
ance. For know what God is, who utters these Oracles. — 
One x :ho precludes all contradiction, and exacts implicit 
obec v ice. For He who possesses an unerring acquaintance 
with what is best for us, is the proper object of our entire 
trust in whatever He pronounces and whatever He ordains. 

TO ZENO, PRESBYTER. 

The relationship of blood is by no means to be put on the 
same footing with moral propinquity. Wherefore, if I address 
you as the nephew of the venerable bishop Hermogenes, I do 
you no favour • but if I call you his affectionate and worthy 
disciple, I pay a due respect to both — to you as a follower of 
one of the best of men, to him as one who has made an ex- 
cellent man of one of his noblest followers. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 521 

TO PETER, PRESBYTER. 

Hear my opinion, O thou, (in addressing whom I know of no 
appellation sufficiently exalted,) which is as follows. I think 
that the first preachers of the word drew willing hearers to 
their divine instructions, not only by their faithful discourses, 
but by their personal example ; confirming their teaching by 
the consistency of their practice, the one being the nerve and 
sinew of the other. It was thus by the consent between their 
words and actions, without which they would have exposed 
themselves to ridicule, as do some of the present day, (I mean 
not to speak offensively) and by this congruity of their lives 
with their doctrines, that they subdued the minds of men. 
Wherefore it was that Christ, well knowing that discourse, 
without a consonant practice, is weak and emasculate, and that 
he only who is inspired with a performing zeal, as well as with 
the powers of speech, brings sufficient life and energy to carry 
on the great work, furnished these teachers with every endow- 
ment of virtue and philosophy, instructing them by his own 
example as well as precept, and adorning them with heavenly 
gifts ; and thus furnished, he sent them forth to catch and 
reclaim men. For this he well knew, that the conduct and man- 
ners of the preachers worked upon men's minds with an effect 
scarcely less potent than miracles. Being dispersed, therefore, 
over the whole world, as a sort of labourers with wings on 
their shoulders, distributing the word of godliness, and regu- 
lating themselves agreeably to the model of their great Master, 
by exhibiting lives not merely blameless, but admirable, they 
subdued all things under the sun; whereas nothing could 
subdue them ; neither wisdom and learning, nor power, nor 
wealth, nor empire, nor dominion, nor barbarian rage, nor 
demoniacal combination, nor Satan himself, nor hunger, nor 
headlong violence, nor chains, nor any other things that strike 
us with terror. All yielded and gave way to them ; and 
counted defeat more splendid than victory, with all its trophies ; 
deeming it far better to be nobly beaten, than to be disgrace- 
fully victorious, they were made the citizens of heaven. 



522 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 



TO ADAMANTIUS. 

Why should you wonder that after the coming of the Saviour 
in the flesh many heresies should have sprung up, considering 
that Satan, when he heard it distinctly proclaimed that he 
was about to be finally condemned, and to suffer his merited 
punishment, scattered abroad the seeds of these heresies, that 
he might multiply the sharers and companions of his suffer- 
ings : and that even before the blessed advent of our Lord, 
not a few heresies existed. For some men even denied the 
very existence of a God ; others said that if there was a 
God, still it was a God without providence ; while others 
admitted both a God and a providence, but confined the 
providence of God to the things of heaven. Others were for 
extending the providence of God to the things of earth, but 
not to all earthly things, only to things more excellent ; as to 
kings and princes. There were some who maintained that all 
things were left to themselves ; and some that all things were 
controlled by a fatal necessity ; while others asserted the 
dominion of a blind fortuity. Some thought it lawful and 
right to pay adoration to idols ; some that marriage with 
mothers was to be approved ; some justified human sacrifices; 
some the sacrificial slaughter of animals ; some thought oxen 
to be the properest victims, and some camels ; some even 
thought that men might eat one another. Were I to enume- 
rate all these cases, I might be discredited, though I could 
not be confuted. Now I argue from these cases thus. — If at 
all periods of time there have existed these dissentient opinions 
and practices among men, (for at various periods the eager- 
ness of men after new things, and new modes, with their 
proneness to sedition, have disposed them to convulse the 
present, and propose new laws for the future, according to 
each man's ingenuity, or the complexion of his mind) why 
should you wonder that in a matter so far transcending human 
reason, as the religion of Christ, contentions and discords 
should distract the minds of beings so subject to the excite- 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLTNARIS. 523 

ments of ambition, and to be agitated by furious and madden- 
ing impulses. 

TO NILUS, ON ORATORY. 

The virtues of oratory are these, — truth, conciseness, perspi- 
cuity, and suitableness to the occasion. The contraries to 
these are its vices, — falsehood, prolixity, obscurity, and un- 
seasonableness. For what will it avail us to be true, if we are 
not concise, and concise if not clear, and clear if not season- 
able. When all these virtues meet in a composition, it is 
then that it is effective, and impressive, and living. It leads 
the hearers by the force of truth, exercises their thoughts by 
its brevity, captivates by its perspicuity, and is consummated 
by its suitableness to the occasion. 

TO OPHELIUS, THE GRAMMARIAN. 

It seems to me to be a mark of dulness, though to some of 
you grammarians it may not appear so, to be over nice in the 
use of terms. But as you are so very wise in these matters, I 
think it worth while to satiate you with a little of my own on 
this subject. Oldest and youngest (TrpeatvTEpoQ kcu veuraTog) 
is not to be said of one of two brothers, but of more than two. 
' Older and younger' are proper when we are speaking of 
two ; the accession of a third demands the use of the super- 
lative. 

TO ADAMANT1US. 

You must know, your friend, so magniloquous and such a 
searcher after words, (Xs^rjpac) came to my house, just as 
I was returning home ; and when there, became so enchanted 
with the study of philosophy, that he was content to stay 
where he was. Mark the effect of his visit, — he has now 
closed his mouth upon his tongue, and transferred his atten- 
tion to his mind, and thinks eloquence a small affair in com- 
parison of philosophy. 



524 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 



TO HIERO, SCHOLASTICUS. 

Those who designedly obscure the truth by the artifices of 
diction are, in my mind, more contemptible than those who 
do not comprehend it. Those who from a dulness of capacity 
fail in the pursuit of it, are, perhaps, to be pitied and pardoned. 
But those who have pursued it with success, but maliciously 
hide it from discovery, sin beyond the hope of forgiveness. 

TO PETER, PRESBYTER. 

Peace, if it is in conjunction w T ith righteousness, is, indeed, a 
thing truly divine ; but if it is not so allied, it betrays the 
beauty and perfection of virtue. There is peace among rob- 
bers, and peace among wolves; but the peace of robbers is a 
league against men, and the peace of wolves threatens destruc- 
tion to the sheep. I would not call that peace which has not 
the ornament of righteousness. When this is added to it, I 
call it peace. Thus Christ says, " I came not to bring peace 
upon earth, but a sword." Not that he repudiates peace, but 
the peace that is yoked with evil. In another place he says, 
" My peace I give to you." That, therefore, is truly peace 
which is sanctified by its alliance with righteousness and 
holiness. 

TO ASCLEPIUS, BISHOP. 

As you are desirous of knowing how I think the precept in 
Scripture, " Be not righteous over much," is to be under- 
stood ; I will give you my opinion. I think it is open to a 
double explanation. It may mean either " Do not exact or 
execute rigid justice," (juij yivov aKpi€o$acaiog 22 ) but let bene- 

22 This is the terra used by Aristotle (Api=r. H0i/c. A. ice<p. i.) in distinguishing 
between common law, in which the rule must be general, technical, and fixed, 
and equity, which makes an application of the wider principles of universal 
justice to temper the strict letter of a positive institution. The Seventy do not 
use the Aristotelian terms. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 525 

volence prevail against it: it is just to resent an injury : but 
it is the part of wisdom to bear it with composure. Or the 
scriptural passage may be thus interpreted, " Walk in the 
middle path of virtue ;" for excess or deficiency turns us out 
of the right course, and ends in transgression. And that the 
very wise precept which immediately follows looks that way 
is manifest, " Neither make thyself over wise, why shouldest 
thou destroy thyself," 23 which one of the seven wise men, 
so called, appears to have stolen, unless, indeed, it was an 
accidental coincidence. The sentiment to which I allude is, 
" the mean is the best" (/uerpov apL<zov), which another has thus 
expressed, " Let nothing be too much" (/mridtv ayav). 241 And 
not only in virtue, but even in piety, the maxim is of force, 
for piety is in the middle between impiety and superstition. 

TO ZENO. 

That while the church was flourishing, and not yet in the 
diseased state in which it now is, divine graces formed a sacred 
band or chorus around it, its affairs being under the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit, and every minister moved and directed by 
its influence, is known and admitted by all. And that after a 
time it became diseased, and fell into disorder and insubordi- 
nation, so that not only the graces (for that might not be so 
grievous an event, if that were all) but the life and virtue of 
the church abandoned it, is also well known to all. To pass 
by other matters, I will take one fact for a specimen. The 
name of peace is everywhere, the thing itself nowhere. The 
church is like a woman fallen from her first estate of purity 
and felicity, and retaining only the vestiges of her former self. 
The church has her caskets and her cases of jewels and orna- 
ments, but of her real wealth she is bereaved, not from the 
neglect of him who first adorned her, but from the unfaithful- 
ness of those who have mal-administered her affairs. Some 
have dared to buy, and some to sell the priesthood ; others do 

23 Eccles. vii. 16. 24 Ne quid nimis. 



526 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

what, if I might, I should not dare to publish; others say 
what it is not lawful even to think. Justly, therefore, has 
the Lord and Bridegroom of the church threatened these per- 
sons with that of which you now seek from me the disclosure. 
" The Lord of that servant, who has so acted, will come, and 
will cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the 
unbelievers." But this threat is to them a fable, and this 
sentence an idle tale, although the end of the world is ap- 
proaching, and is in travail with their punishment. But do 
thou, O thou illustrious pupil of the church, pay no respect 
to those who are on the eve of shipwreck, nor compare your-, 
self with these senseless persons ; but render still more luminous 
the light of your understanding, refreshing it from the source 
of living virtue. And expect the Bridegroom to come attended 
by those who are, as virgins, pure in mind and body, to take 
vengeance upon those who, by their iniquities, have sullied 
the dignity of the priesthood, and its virgin sanctity. 

TO ESCULAPIUS, THE SOPHIST. 

It has quite escaped these Greeks, that by the arguments 
which they bring against the Christian religion they confute 
themselves. They say that the sacred Scriptures are bar- 
barously written, and full of foreign terms and idioms, without 
the connexion and order required in composition, and em- 
barrassing the meaning of what is said by a redundancy of 
diction. But let these very things teach them the force 
of truth. For how has it happened that eloquence itself has 
been persuaded and convinced by this artless and simple 
dialect ? Let the wise say how it is, that this language, so 
full of barbarisms and solecisms, has mastered dogmatic error, 
with all its advantages of Athenian eloquence. How is it that 
Plato, that prince and Choryphseus of Gentile philosophy, 
could never bring over a single tyrant to his opinions, but 
this barbarous dialect, so full of solecisms, has spread its con- 
quests over sea and land. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 527 



TO NILUS, 

ON THE PASSAGE IN ST. PAUL, EPH. VI. 12, " FOR WE WRESTLE NOT," 

ET SEQ. 

As the strength and skill of a wrestler (athleta) is most con- 
spicuously displayed when, though locked in the powerful 
grasp of his adversary, he yet subdues him in the struggle on 
the stadium ; so Christ engages in combat with the demons 
on the strength of his cross alone, that the trophies of his 
triumph may be the more signal and illustrious. And this is 
what you wish me to expound. Having spoiled principalities 
and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over 
them in it, i. e. by his cross. Thus, in truth, were the demons 
triumphed over by a wrestler transfixed to the cross by his 
hands and feet. Thus was the devil baffled and worsted by 
a single arm of flesh, and that flesh suspended on a cross, to 
which he is obliged to yield the palm of victory. 

TO THEONUS, EPISCOPUS. 

Be persuaded of this, my excellent friend, that we act sin- 
fully in resenting wrongs done to ourselves, and passing lightly 
over offences against God. I grant that when we ourselves 
are injured, a forgiving temper is very commendable; but 
when the Divine Goodness is offended, as it is by intemperance 
and excess (and various are the ways in which we may thus 
offend), a feeling of indignation becomes us rather than com- 
placency. The practice of men is the opposite to this course, 
we cannot forgive those who act as our enemies, while we are 
mild and philanthropic towards those who arm their tongues 
against God. Moses was full of wrath against the Israelites 
when they formed the calf, and this wrath was far better than 
gentleness would have been in such circumstances. Elias 
was angry with the idolaters, John Baptist with Herod, and 
Paul with Elymas, not for themselves, but from loyalty to the 



528 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

majesty of God, who, indeed, needs no avenger, being sufficient 
for himself; but is pleased with the zeal of the good against 
the transgressors of his laws. The virtuous are regardless of 
injuries intended against themselves, and consider this to be 
the true philosophy. 



Fly, my dearest friend, from the commerce of the wicked ; 
for intercourse with the bad, by an unperceived advance, 
introduces defilement into the soul. Many with a high opinion 
of their own steadiness and excellent principles, and fancying 
themselves secured thereby from whatever temptations may 
occur, have by slow and gentle steps been led on till they fall 
into the gulf. Habit is a powerful agent, and by degrees is 
changed into nature itself; so that some call it a second 
nature. Others say that nature is subverted by habit, adopt- 
ing the notion of the old poet : 

" The drop continuous hollows out the stone." 

What is harder than stone, or what softer than water? but by 
perpetual attrition nature is thus overcome. 



From the multitude of epistles left us by this interesting 
and amiable Christian teacher of the fourth century, I have 
extracted the few specimens above presented to the reader. 
That they might be the fairer specimens, they have not been 
selected, but adopted as they occurred. If we regard the 
soundness of the instructions they contain, and the pleasing 
manner in which they are presented to us, it may not be 
extravagant eulogy to say of them, that in this respect we are 
under no greater obligation to any of the Fathers; and I do 
not hesitate to recommend the perusal and study of them to 
the ingenuous youth of our own universities and academies. 
With Isidore our intercourse in this work with the Greek 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 529 

Fathers may, perhaps, with propriety terminate, and our 
attention may now be diverted to the Latin letter-writers of 
the fourth century, who will be chiefly found among the 
Christian fathers of the western church. The two prelates of 
the east, Cyril of Jerusalem and Cyril: of Alexandria, were 
both considerable writers of epistles, but their epistles were 
properly treatises in the form of letters. Cyril, bishop of 
Jerusalem, who lived and died in the fourth century, has left 
a celebrated letter, addressed to the Emperor Constant! us, 
containing a marvellous description of a supernatural light, 
observed over Mount Golgotha, at the commencement of his 
episcopate, and called " the apparition of the cross," for that 
was the form which it was said to have assumed ; which 
luminous cross is stated to have been visible for several hours 
to the people of Jerusalem. The expression of a wish, with 
which the letter concludes, that Constantius might be induced 
thereby to glorify the con substantial Trinity, will tend, per- 
haps, to invalidate the evidence of the miracle in the minds 
of many not disposed to incredulity, since it shews that Cyril, 
a zealous trinitarian controversialist, sought thereby to influ- 
ence the creed of the emperor, who strongly favoured the 
Arian tenets ; and it must be confessed to have been but too 
common a maxim among the great ecclesiastics of that day, 
that a pious and orthodox end justified a recourse to means 
inconsistent with veracity. 

The above mentioned letter, which is all that Cyril has left 
us in the epistolary form, and which is given entire in Cave's 
Lives of the Fathers, is certainly of a character not a little 
remarkable, but hardly such as would much interest a searcher 
after truth in the present day. This luminous cross might, 
after all, have been only a natural phenomenon, not well 
understood in the time of Cyril of Jerusalem, who certainly 
did not flourish in a very intelligent era in the history of 
human knowledge, having terminated a career of much activity, 
much contention, and some usefulness, in the year 386. If 
more of his letters had come down to us, we should probably 
have found them entirely devoted to the subjects of his 

M M 



530 FROM THE TIME OF LTBANIUS 

Catechetical Discourses, and such controversial topics as would 
have saved them from any handling in this volume. 26 

Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, whom we have seen in con- 
nexion with the tragical fate of Hypatia, a catastrophe not 
exceeded in the cruelty which attended it by any deed recorded 
in the annals of crime, but whose memory has not been with- 
out its vindicators from a charge so covering it with ignominy, 
has left among his voluminous works letters to the number of 
sixty-one, but they are for the most part unfitted to the purpose 
of this volume, being all controversial, and nearly all relating 
to the Nestorian heresy, of which there is one containing twelve 
solemn curses denounced against its founder. 



The Latin letter-writers of the fourth century now present 
themselves to our notice, among whom the Fathers hold a 
conspicuous place. The Fathers of an earlier period, though 
in many respects they by no means yield to those of the fourth 
century, in the weight and importance of their subjects, or in 
the correctness and perspicuity with which they discuss them, 
do not supply us with specimens of epistolary correspondence 
that serve to mark the progress of that department of litera- 
ture. And considerable as was the industry with which 
Cyprian, the admirable bishop of Carthage, 27 transmitted his 

26 The letter in question has been held in different degrees of estimation and 
credit. Sozomen cites it in proof of the fact, and Glycas, Theophanes, Euty- 
chius, and some others. While by some, as by Rivetus, in his Critica Sacra, 
the letter itself has been regarded as supposititious. Our English authors, 
however, have generally considered it as authentic. See Cave, W hi taker, 
Mill, and Bishop Bull. It is due to Cyril of Jerusalem to advert to the value 
of his Catecheses, which may be considered as one of the most clear, and 
probably the most ancient, abridgment of Christian doctrines. They are 
twenty-three in number — eighteen to catechumens, five to the newly baptized. 

27 It is impossible to speak of Cyprian in language less expressive of 
homage. But we still come very short of Gregory Nazianzen, who recognizes 
his powerful interest in heaven with the Virgin Mary, and addresses to him a 
prayer for help and protection in the guidance of those of whom Gregory had 
the charge. To lend colour and support to such practices as these, the fourth 
century of the church had need to borrow all the aid that could be derived from 
miracles and legendary stories. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDOXIUS APOLLINAIUS. 531 

Christian instructions through the channels of epistles ex- 
pressed with a vigorous command of the Latin tongue, his 
performances in this kind have little if anything of the charac- 
ter and style of letter-writing, or of that interchange or reci- 
procity of sentiment and opinion which we look for in epistolary 
intercourse. We will pass, therefore, to Ambrose, archbishop 
of Milan, who was a great and distinguished writer of letters, 
and some of a familiar and even domestic nature, and who was 
very eminent among the Fathers of the western church, by the 
sanctity, dignity, and decisiveness of his character. 

Ambrose is supposed to have been born in France, and 
probably in the city of Aries, which was the metropolis of 
Gallia Narbonensis, the seat of the imperial viceroys, being 
styled by Ausonius, on account of its magnitude and populous- 
ness, Roma Gallica. He was the offspring of a noble parentage, 
his father, whose name also was Ambrose, being the prefect 
of the province of Gaul, and consequently a person of high 
trust and importance. The time of his birth appears to have 
been about 333. I pass over the silly incidents which have 
been narrated as attendant on his infancy, illusions or decep- 
tions of credulity or superstition, and place him at once before 
the reader, in the maturity of his years, possessed of great 
learning, and from a renowned pleader in the forum, advanced 
by his patron, Anicius Probus, to be governor under him of a 
great part of Gallia Cisalpina, and invested with the consular 
dignity. Thus promoted, he took up his residence at Milan, 
where he continued five years in the administration of his 
high office, distinguished by his justice and prudence ; at the 
end of which term Auxentius, the archbishop of Milan, died, 
leaving the see vacant, and disburthened of a very decided sup- 
porter of the Arian cause. The emperor being besought by 
the bishops of the province to appoint a successor to Auxen- 
tius, declined that exercise of his authority, and desired the 
bishops themselves to name the new archbishop, as better 
qualified to make the selection. A tumult was raised by the 
strenuous efforts of the Arians to procure the election for one 
of their own party, which called for the interference of 
Ambrose, in his official capacity ; but as he was addressing a 



532 FROM THE TIME OF LTBANIUS 

grave oration to the crowd assembled in the church, exhorting 
them to peace and unity, a voice like that of a child, exclaim- 
ing, Ambrose is bishop, was heard from among the multitude, 
which seemed, to ears not ill-disposed for the miraculous 
intimation, to come from Heaven ; and by general acclamation, 
Ambrose was declared to be destined to the high office, by an 
appointment the most authentic and decisive, 

We have next the account of the reluctance of Ambrose to 
accept the appointment, and of his retreat into the country, 
where he was lodged at the house of one Laurentius, his friend, 
till a proclamation that any one concealing the fugitive would 
do it at the peril of his life, he was brought back to Milan, 
where he was obliged to yield to the flattering force of imperial 
authority, or rather what seemed to him the command of an 
invisible and irresistible power. 

A few days after his baptism, Ambrose was consecrated and 
invested with the charge of the see of Milan ; which event took 
place A. d. 374; his ordination being not strictly canonical, 
but approved by the bishops in general, agreeable to the 
people, and satisfactory to the Emperor Valentinian. One of 
the first acts of the new archbishop was to dispose of his entire 
property, by committing the care of his domestic affairs to his 
brother Satyrus, and settling his lands on the church after the 
death of his sister Marcellina ; while all his treasures in money 
and goods were, by an immediate gift, bestowed upon the 
poor. To complete his theological studies, (for though he 
had been carefully instructed in the learning of a scholar, he 
was little acquainted with the doctrines or controversies of 
the Christian church, when he entered upon its most important 
functions) he placed himself under the tuition of Simplician, 
a presbyter at Rome, who, both by his learning and piety, was 
considered as eminently qualified for the undertaking. His 
three books De Virginibus, which he dedicated to his sister, 
his Commentary on St. Luke, and his three books of Offices, 
written in imitation of Cicero, were the earliest fruits of this 
new direction of his studies. 

From the ordination of Ambrose to the death of the Empe- 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 533 

ror Valentinian I. in 375, a period of little more than a year, 
and during the eventful reign of his son and successor, Gratian, 
whose death happened in 383, Ambrose exercised with great 
ability and zeal the functions of his high office, interrupted 
only by the incursions of the barbarous invaders who were 
spreading their devastations over the north of Italy, and com- 
pelled him, for a short period, to fly into Illyricum, to escape 
their fury. 

Soon after the death of Gratian (August 25, 383), when 
the supreme authority devolved upon the young Valentinian, 
under the guardianship of his mother, the Empress Justina, 
the archbishop of Milan was sent, in a spiritual and political 
character, to negociate with Maximus, then at Treves, at the 
head of his insurrectionary and triumphant army, and to 
secure, if possible, the peace of Italy. These important mis- 
sions were executed by Ambrose with great fidelity, spirit, 
and courage. But a more trying exercise of his fortitude and 
prudence awaited him in his own province of Milan ; where 
he refused to concede the use of a single church to the Arian 
worshippers, at the command of the empress, who had zealously 
adopted that heresy, and was resolved to protect it throughout 
the dominions of her son. To surrender this point was con- 
sidered by Ambrose as entirely inconsistent with his duty. 
He refused, and the empress insisted ; and the city was thrown 
into convulsion by the partisans of the court and the church ; 
the archbishop being frequently called upon to use his authority 
and eloquence to appease the multitude, who had rallied round 
him with a determination to support his cause, which was 
considered as that of truth and orthodoxy. 

While this violent contest between the empress and her son, 
with the weight of the magistracy and the military on one 
side, and the archbishop, with the whole strength of an incited 
and enthusiastic people on the other, was threatening the 
peace and safety of the empire, the victory was decided by the 
following incident. Ambrose was solicited to consecrate and 
dedicate a church, which had been lately built at Milan, to 
which he consented, provided some remains of martyrs could 



534 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

be found, which might be buried under the altar; a ceremony 
then considered as important in the dedication of a church. 
In a vision or dream, a place was indicated to the archbishop, 
where the remains of two martyrs lay buried, near the tombs 
of two other saints, St. Felix and St. Nabor. Search was 
accordingly made, and, in the place thus pointed out, two tall 
skeletons were found, with their heads separated from the 
bodies. These were the relics of St. Protasius and St. Ger- 
vasius, of whom the former had been beheaded, and the latter 
whipped to death with plumbatse, or scourges with leaden 
bullets at the end of them. There was also a copious effusion 
of blood in the coffins. 

Great was the press of the people to see these relics. And 
the curiosity of the crowd was abundantly rewarded by the 
miracles which followed this wonderful discovery. A blind 
man,, whose name was Severus, so particular is the account 
given by Paulinus, in his Life of Ambrose, had but to touch 
with his handkerchief the bones of the saints, and wipe his 
eyes with it, to have them restored to perfect vision. Many 
who were possessed and tormented with evil spirits were 
instantly delivered from them, by contact with the skeletons; 
while others, by touching the clothes in which they were 
wrapped, were cured of their diseases. 

These extraordinary cures were denied and ridiculed by the 
Arians, but confidently affirmed by Ambrose himself, by Pau- 
linus his secretary, and Augustine his proselyte and pupil. 
And it certainly appears that these representations, which 
many sincere and devout Christians would be disposed to call 
theatrical, were contrived and exhibited by the special autho- 
rity, if not the ingenuity, of the great archbishop. This event, 
whatever was its true character, was the prelude of victory for 
Ambrose, whose cause was thus supernaturally vindicated. 
Secular and imperial authority bowed to the dictates of a 
paramount authority, and monarchs might envy the security 
with which the saint was seated on his spiritual throne. 

By the conquest of Maximus by Theodosius, the subsequent 
assassination of Valentinian the Second, and the complete 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 535 

victory obtained over Eugenius, the remaining pretender to 
the throne, Theodosius became the undisputed sovereign of 
the Roman world. In this plenitude of power the emperor 
resided some time at Milan, where, in the succeeding year, he 
fell sick, and after frequent communion with St. Ambrose till 
the hour of his departure, committing to him the concerns 
of the church, and settling the imperial dignity upon his two 
sons, Arcadius and Honorius, he died on the 17th of January 
in the year 395 of the Christian era. His funeral was solem- 
nized at Milan, and Ambrose pronounced a laboured pane- 
gyrical oration on the actions of his remarkable life. 

Shortly after the death of Theodosius, the fame of Ambrose 
extended so far upon the earth, that Fritigil, Queen of the 
Marcomanni, sent a letter to him to request him to instruct 
her in the Christian faith, to which letter he returned an 
epistle in a catechistical form, advising her to maintain peace 
with the Roman empire ; upon which she appears to have 
come to Milan, to have a personal conference with the arch- 
bishop, but before her purpose could be answered, his last 
hour was approaching. Paulinus, his amanuensis, records 
that as the archbishop was dictating to him an exposition of 
the twenty-third Psalm, a little before his departure, he sud- 
denly looked up, and was greatly surprised at seeing a globe 
of fire, like a shield, surrounding Ambrose's head, which, by 
degrees, entered into his mouth ; upon which his countenance 
was as white as snow, but in a little time returned to its former 
complexion. He adds, that this was the last time the arch- 
bishop dictated any thing to him, which was the reason why 
that exposition was left imperfect. 

On the day in which he died, he lay several hours with his 
arms stretched out in the form of a cross, and with his lips 
continually moving, though none could collect his words. 
Honoratus, bishop of Vercellae, being on his bed in an upper 
chamber, suddenly heard a voice, which said three times, 
" Make haste, for he is about to depart," who, thereupon 
came down, and gave him the holy eucharist, and then he 
immediately expired, on the 4th of April, in the year 397. 



536 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANJUS 

Thus was withdrawn from among men this great doctor of 
the Latin church ; a person, without doubt, possessed of many 
eminent qualities, but so largely partaking of the childish 
credulity and superstition of the time, and so frequently the 
subject of fabricated tales and impostures, that the true lines 
of his character are hardly to be accurately traced through 
the misty medium in which he is enveloped. The efforts 
which have been made to enlarge the dimensions of the figure, 
have obscured its real proportions, and present him to us a 
great personage, indeed, but with some imposition upon our 
senses, and with some extravagance of effect. Among the latest 
miracles ascribed to him we read, that after the death of the 
Emperor Theodosius, a servant of the Count Stilicho, for 
some ill acts done by him, was by Ambrose delivered over to 
Satan, upon which an evil spirit immediately seized upon 
him, and tormented him, to the great amazement and terror 
of the beholders. After this we find him departing out of life 
with a pompous retinue of fictitious wonders. Still he stands 
before us a man of great worth and moral superiority, and 
with qualities bordering on Christian heroism, invincibly firm 
in the maintenance of a courageous consistency, and on a 
level with the greatest occasions which the agitated condition 
of the time could produce. 

Among the instances here alluded to, no one is so promi- 
nent as his behaviour towards the Emperor Theodosius, on 
the promiscuous massacre of a large portion of the inhabi- 
tants of Thessalonica. The people of that city had mur- 
dered, in a furious assault upon the garrison, the general, 
Botheric, and some of the principal officers, in revenge for 
the imprisonment of a favourite charioteer, who was wont 
to amuse them on the race course, and whose liberation 
was refused to be granted to their urgent demand. The 
refusal was justified by the crime of the prisoner; and the 
outrage committed by the people was attended by acts of 
the most savage barbarity. The mangled bodies of the victims 
were dragged along the streets, and the mind of the emperor was 
filled with horror and indignation by the recital of the atrocity. 



TO THE TIME OF S1DONIUS APOLLIN ARTS. 537 

Mr. Gibbon has well observed, that " the sentence of a dis- 
passionate judge would have inflicted a severe punishment on 
the authors of the crime; and the merit of Botheric might 
contribute to exasperate the grief and indignation of his 
master. But the fiery and choleric temper of Theodosius was 
impatient of the dilatory forms of judicial enquiry, and he 
hastily resolved that the blood of his lieutenant should be 
expiated by the blood of the guilty people." 

The messengers of death were dispatched, and it is said 
the emperor repented of his decree when it was too late to 
recal them. The massacre of many thousands of the people 
in the area of the circus, to which they were invited to witness 
the games, by the soldiers of the emperor, and by his especial 
order, was doubtless a stain upon the character of a Christian 
prince, of the deepest die; and his guilt before God was such 
as only to be counterbalanced by the transcendental merits of 
Him who has expiated every sin to which those merits are 
applied, through faith and repentance ; but the stipulated 
penance enjoined by Ambrose, and the rigorous conditions of 
pardon and peace, propounded, limited, and mitigated by the 
authority and concession of a human dispenser of punishment 
and mercy to the soul of the culprit, present to the view of 
the humble believer, whose hope and trust lie wholly within 
the compass of the revealed word, no legitimate or satisfac- 
tory exposition of the methods of Divine mercy. After a 
few months of humiliation, (the canonical period of penance 
having been reduced in favour of this special suppliant) 
in which the imperial homicide, stripped of his purple, and 
all ensigns of royalty, in the midst of the church of Milan, 
in a suppliant posture, implored with sighs and tears the 
pardon of his sins, Theodosius was restored to the communion 
of the faithful. 

The victory of Ambrose was thus complete ; and if he 
had the conscience and conviction of the penitent for his 
allies, (and under all the circumstances of the case there 
seems to be no stretch of charity in supposing he had,) his 
victory was one of the most edifying facts in history. Enough 



538 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

has, perhaps, been said of the spirit displayed by Ambrose 
in this extraordinary transaction. He well knew his man, 
and probably had no fear for his own safety. Regard to 
the soul of his prince was, it is but just to suppose, the 
end he had in view; but still the worldly aims of a mind 
ambitious of rule, would have suggested the course adopted 
by him as his wisest policy. The proceeding, however, 
had all the ostensible marks of greatness, and being on the 
side of humanity, and opposed to power, it does not become 
us, at this distance of time, to question the uprightness of its 
motives. 

The many miracles which owed their acceptance in the 
world to the name and credit of Ambrose, bring either his 
integrity or perspicacity under suspicion, unless we are dis- 
posed at once to believe them to have been really performed, 
and suffer our reason to be swamped by the multitude of 
similar inventions which, with equal claims to belief, are 
gathered round almost every saint and martyr of Christian 
antiquity — but particularly of those of the fourth and fifth 
centuries. 28 

28 In the fourth century, the accumulation of miraculous tales and legends, 
and the wonders wrought by relics, was swelled to an enormous amount, and 
were collected, accredited, and confirmed by many of the eminent fathers of 
the church by whom that age was so distinguished. Jerome wrote the Life of 
Hilarion, in which, full credit is given to the extraordinary narratives of that 
hermit saint, as well as to the strange stories of Paul and Malchus. Gregory 
of Nyssa was an implicit believer in the miracles attributed to Gregory of 
Neocsesarea, usually called Thaumaturgus ; and the great Basil has given us 
his character in terms which leave us in no doubt of his full acceptance of 
all the wonders related of him by his brother Gregory Nissensis. We have 
the life, and all the extraordinary things done by Martin of Tours, recorded by 
Sulpicius Severus, the best Latin writer of the fourth century, whose work was 
in the greatest request at Rome, according to his own statement. See the first 
of his three Dialogues. 

I do not pronounce upon the title which these miracles have to be believed ; 
but I would observe, that Dr. Dodwell, as well as Dr. Church, in their defence 
of the primitive miracles, appear by their silence to give up those of the fourth 
and fifth centuries ; and Mr. Dodwell, the father, in speaking of the Life of 
Gregory of Niocaesarea by Gregory of Nyssa, observes, that " in the Life of 
Gregory the wonder-worker, written by Gregory of Nyssa, a bishop of the 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 539 

On the miracles attending the discovery of the relics of 
Protasius and Gervasius, it is difficult to speak in a language 
sufficiently reverent respecting the part acted by Ambrose 
himself in that religious drama. It should be our wish, if 
possible, to charge such practices or delusions upon the times 
in which the espousers and promoters of them lived, rather 
than on their own heads ; but then we should forget that these 
are the men which gave this character to the times, from 
which they are to borrow their excuse ; if we say that in this 
incident of the relics Ambrose was deceived by his enthusiasm, 
we cannot but see that as the miracle answered the two objects 
of providing for the dedication of the church, and confuting 
the Arians, with the empress at their head, there was an ex- 
pediency in the case, which is rarely in the contemplation of 
the enthusiast. If the discovery was a real miracle, one can- 
not but remark that it occurred most seasonably to terminate 
a contest pregnant with disaster. 29 

greatest piety and gravity, there are many things which breathe the air of 
imposture, and the genius of the fourth century ; so that I dare not mix them 
with what is more genuine, for fear of hurting the credit of all." See Mr. Dod- 
well's Dissert. Iren. quoted by Dr. Middleton, Free Enq. 128, 129. I would 
venture to add, that if Gregory of Nyssa, the pious brother of Basil, was under 
a delusion with respect to some of these miracles, why not as to all ? And if 
such a man suffered himself to be the propagator of spurious miracles, we 
may well be reserved in listening to others on the same subject. Mr. Dodwell 
gives his assent only to the primitive miracles down to the period of the estab- 
lishment of Christianity by human laws ; being of opinion that many things 
concurred to recommend the miracles of the early ages which give no such 
countenance to those which followed. Of the miracles of the fourth and fifth 
centuries, perhaps, I may venture to say that those imputed to the bones and 
remains of saints and martyrs require the strongest attestations to induce belief. 

29 From Mede's Apostacie of the latter Times, from p. 120 to 123. 

" The deifying and invocating of saints and adoring of relics is the most 
ancient for time of all the rest, and began to appear in the church presently 
after the death of Julian the Apostate, who was the last ethnical emperor ; the 
grounds and occasions whereof were most strange reports of wonders shewed 
upon those who approached the shrines of martyrs, and prayed at their memo- 
ries and sepulchres." P. 120. 

" Thus the reliques of martyrs beginning to be esteemed above the choicest 
jewels, for the supposed virtue even of the very air of them, were wonderfully 



540 FROM THE TIME OF L1BANIUS 

We will now pass from this transient view of the life and 
character of St. Ambrose to the production of a few of his 
letters, which are not in general very interesting as specimens 
of letter-writing, though many of them are valuable for their 
spirit and matter. But before I part with this venerable and 
holy man, it is due to him to say, that many of the qualities 
which shed the greatest lustre on the human character were 
his in no inferior degree. In piety, charity, and humanity, 

sought after, as some divine elixir, sovereign both to body and soul. Where- 
upon, another scene of wonders entered, even of visions and revelations, 
wonderful and admirable for the discovery of the sepulchres and ashes of 
martyrs, yea, and some whose names and memories till then no man had ever 
heard of, as St. Ambrose's Gervasius and Protasius. Thus in every corner of 
the Christian world were new martyrs' bones ever and anon discovered, whose 
verity miraculous effects and cures seemed to approve; and therefore they 
were diversly dispersed and gloriously templed and enshrined." P. 121. 



" Babylas's bones were the first that all my search can find which charmed 
the devil of Daphne, Apollo Daphnaeus, when Julian the Apostate offered so 
many sacrifices to make him speak, and being asked why he was so mute, 
forsooth the corpse of Babylas, the martyr, buried near the temple in Daphne, 
stopped his wind- pipe." Ibid. 

" Besides the silence of all undoubted antiquity respecting any such sepulchral 
wonders to have happened in the former ages, the very manner of speech which 
the fathers living in this miraculous age used when they spake of these things, 
will argue they were then accounted novelties, and not as continued from the 
Apostle's times. Chrysostom, in his Oration contra Gentiles, of the business 
of Babylas thus speaks, sing a^i^u tolq viro tujv Airo^okwv yeyevvrjfievoig 
ra itapovra Secopaiv ttcivevOu) rt]Q avaiaxwiag. If any man believes not these 
things which are said to be done by the Apostles, let him now, beholding the 
present, desist from his impudence. Ambrose, Epist. ad Sororem Marcel- 
linam, re'ating a piece of the speech he made upon the translations of the 
bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, and the miracles then shewed, Reparata 
(saith he) vetusta temporis miracula cernitis. " You see the miracles of 
ancient times (he means the times of Christ and his Apostles) renewed/' St. 
Aug. lib. de civ. Dei 22, cap. 8, saith, " We made an order to have bills given 
out of such miracles as were done, when we saw the wonders of ancient times 
renewed in ours." But alas ! now began the v<7spoi icaipoi, this was the fatal 
time, and thus the Christian apostasy was to be ushered in. If they had known 
this, it would have turned their joyous shoutings and triumphs, at these things, 
into mournings. " 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONTUS APOLLINARTS. 541 

he seems to have been surpassed by none. The eloquence 
by which he was greatly distinguished was always devoted to 
the cause of kindness, virtue, and justice. Of truth, eternal 
truth, he was a fearless assertory save that his addiction to 
Origen may perhaps have made him too much a partaker of 
some of his aberrations; which principally appear in his ex- 
positions of Scripture, — often vague, fanciful, and unsatisfac- 
tory. His general learning does not appear to have been very 
extensive, and his theology was in some particulars defective ; 
but in holy affections, zeal in the ministry, love to the brother- 
hood, benevolence to all, charity to the poor, spiritual labour, 
care for the church, heroism in the faith, courage in rebuking 
vice, and consistency of life and practice, Ambrose was a bright 
example to the age in which he lived ; and has bequeathed 
that example, to go down together with his valuable delinea- 
tions of moral duty, to a posterity that will ever hold his 
name in grateful remembrance. In his treatment of Theodo- 
sius, in the guilty crisis of his life which has been already 
noticed, though, on the whole, the part of Ambrose through- 
out the transaction was noble in its character and effect, 
there is yet on it an appearance of prelatical presumption, and 
an imposing air of priestly domination, which do not bring 
the archbishop before us in the most amiable Christian atti- 
tude. He who does not see in Ambrose's prescription and 
remission of the amount of formal contrition no stretch of 
arbitrary authority, must entertain very high ideas of sacer- 
dotal privileges; — he who sees no danger or mistake in a 
reliance on the virtue of penance and self-punishment, must 
solace himself with very secondary grounds of pardon and 
grace ; — and he who considers the charge of personal pride and 
arrogance to be refuted by an ostensible carriage of holiness 
and humility, must be but little observant of the pliant policy 
of ambition, and have but a short acquaintance with the 
labyrinths of the human heart. 



542 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 



GRATIAN AUG. TO AMBBOSE, PBIEST OF ALMIGHTY GOD, 
INVITING HIM TO COME TO HIM, TO CONFIRM HIM IN THE 
FAITH, CONCEBNING THE DIVINITY OF THE SON, AND HOLY 
SPIB1T. 

I desire greatly to be in body present with one of whom I 
cherish the remembrance when absent, and with whom I 
converse in mind. Hasten, therefore, unto me, O religious 
priest of God, that you may instruct me further in the doctrine 
which I already believe — not because I am ambitious of con- 
troversy, or would embrace God in words rather than in mind ; 
but that the divine revelation may be more fully received, and 
be more settled in my breast. For He will teach me whom 
I deny not, but confess to be my God and Lord ; not making 
that created nature, which I see in myself, an objection to 
his claim to adoration ; to whom I am sensible I can add 
nothing, but I wish by proclaiming the Son to commend 
myself also to the Father. I will not fear jealousy in God. 
Nor do I consider myself, by any utterance of praise, able to 
amplify divinity. Infirm and fragile as I am, I praise as far 
as I am able, not as far as Divinity claims. I pray you let 
me have that same treatise which you had intended for me, 
accompanying it with your disputation respecting the Holy 
Spirit, so faithfully written, that you may strengthen my con- 
victions of his Godhead by scriptures, and by arguments. May 
the Divinity preserve you many years, who art my parent, and 
the worshipper of the eternal God whom we adore — Jesus 
Christ. 



AMBROSE, BISHOP, TO THE MOST CHBISTJAN PRINCE 
GRATIAN AUG. 

Affection was not wanting, most Christian of Princes, — for 
there is no word I can use more true and more glorious, — 
affection, I say, was not wanting, but respect and veneration 
delayed my availing myself of your condescension, as promptly 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARTS. 543 

as my affection disposed me to do. Nevertheless, if I did not 
meet your returning steps, 30 I met you in mind, I met you in 
prayers for you, — which are those duties most becoming a 
priest. Met, did I say ? When was I absent from one whom 
I followed with my whole affection ; to whom I clung in feel- 
ing and sentiment : and, certainly, when the minds of persons 
are united they are more peculiarly present with each other. 
I was tracing your daily progress — night and day I was en- 
camped with you, and kept you before me in my prayers and 
watches: and however weak in merit, yet am I strenuous 
in affection. While I was humbling myself in prayer for 
your safety, I was promoting my own. There is no adulation 
in all this ; which you require not ; and which I regard as 
unsuited to my office; but an expression of gratitude for the 
favours you have bestowed upon me. 

Our Disposer himself, whom you confess, and in whom you 
piously believe, knows how my bowels are refreshed by your 
faith, your safety, your glory; and that I offer my prayers 
not only as a public duty, but in private love. For you have 
restored to me the quiet of my church — you have closed the 
lips, would that I could add the hearts, of perfidious men ; 
and this you have achieved not less by the authority of your 
faith than of your power. For what shall I say of your recent 
letters ? You have written a whole letter with your own 
hand, so that the very handwriting declares your faith and 
piety. Thus Abraham slew the calf with his own hand, that 
he might minister to his guests ; nor in his religious ministra- 
tion did he seek the aid of others. But he, a private person, 
paid homage either to the Lord and angels, or to the Lord in 
the angels. You, gracious emperor, honour your humble priest 
with your royal condescension. But the Lord is honoured in 
his lowest servant; for He has said, " In as much as ye have 
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have 
done it unto me." 



30 The emperor had just returned from an expedition to the east, into 
Germany. 



544 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

But is it only your humility I praise, which in an emperor 
is sublime ; and not rather your faith, — that faith to which 
your mind, with a consciousness of its own uprightness, has 
given utterance, taught you by him whom you have not 
denied ? For who else was able to teach you, not to impute 
to him that created nature, which you see in yourself? No 
words more appropriate, or more expressive, could have been 
used : for to call Christ a creature, is to make him rather an 
object of contumely, than to confess him with reverence. 
Furthermore, what can be so insulting as to esteem Him to 
be what ive are. You, therefore, have instructed me, by whom 
you are pleased to say you wish to be instructed. How pious^ 
too, was that expression, how admirable, that you do not fear 
the jealousy of God ! You reckon upon a reward from the 
Father, for the love of the Son; and in giving praise to the 
Son, you confess that you are unable to add any thing to Him, 
but that you desire to commend yourself to the Father by 
giving praise to the Son ; all which only He hath taught you, 
who hath said, " He that loveth me, shall be loved of my 
Father." 

You have added, that being weak and fragile, you did not 
think yourself able so to praise the Lord as to amplify in 
words his divinity, and that your praise is such only as you 
can bestow, not such as Divinity itself demands. This weak- 
ness in Christ is made stronger through Him, according to 
the words of the Apostle, " When I am weak, then am I 
strong." This humility excludes fragility. 

I will hasten to come to you as you desire, that I may hear 
and read these things in your presence, and from your own 
mouth. I have sent the two books, not fearing to submit 
them to the risk of your approval ; meanwhile I ask of the 
Spirit to pardon the errors of my performance, well knowing 
who is to be its Judge. 

In the mean time your conviction, and the faith you hold 
concerning the Lord and Saviour, derived from the Son of 
God himself, expands into that fuller predication, in which 
the divinity of the Holy Spirit also is comprehended; so that 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 545 

neither will you impute to Him that created nature which 
you see in yourself, nor think that God the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ is jealous of his own Spirit, for that which has 
nothing in common with created nature is Divine. 

LETTER FROM AMBROSE TO HIS SISTER, ON THE DISCOVERY 
OF THE BONES OF GERVASIUS AND PROTAS1US. 

The Brother to the Lady his Sister, to be preferred before his 
very life and eyes. 31 

As I am wont to make your holiness acquainted with every 
thing which passes here during your absence, you must know 
that we have even made a discovery of holy martyrs. For 
when I was in the act of dedicating a church, many began to 
interrupt me, crying, as with one voice, " Dedicate it as you 
dedicate a Roman church." 32 I answered, " I will do so, if 
I can discover the relics of martyrs." And immediately there 
arose an ardour that seemed a kind of presage of what fol- 
lowed. Why should I multiply words? The Lord bestowed 
favour upon us. Even the clergy trembled as they were 
bidden to clear away the earth from that spot which is before 
the shrines of St. Felix and St. Nabor. I found the signs 
which were looked for. When those also were called in to 
help, on whom I was to lay my hands, the holy martyrs began 
to be so discernible, that, whilst I still kept silence, an urn 
was seized, and was laid down at the place of the holy sepulchre. 
We found two men of astonishing stature, such as a former 
age produced. All the bones were entire, and there was a 
quantity of blood. Great was the concourse of the people for 
the space of two whole days together. Why should I say 
more? We embalmed the whole remains in the regular 
manner. On the approach of evening, we transferred them 
to the church of Fausta. There vigils were kept up the whole 

31 Dominae sorori vitae atque oculis praeferendse frater. 

33 That is to say, by burying in it some relics of saints. The people, it 
seems, were disappointed, because Ambrose omitted this ceremony, which 
usually accompanied the dedication of a Roman church. 

N N 



546 FROM THE TrME OF LIBANIUS 

night long, and an imposition of hands. On the following 
day we transferred them to the church which they call ' the 
Ambrosian/ Whilst we were in the act of doing this, a blind 
man was healed. My discourse to the people was to this 
effect — 'When I considered the vast and unprecedented 
resort of your whole convent to this place, and the gifts of 
Divine Grace which have shone forth in these holy martyrs, I 
judged myself, I confess, to be unequal to this office; nor 
could I think it possible to express in a sermon what I could 
scarcely grasp with my mind, or embrace with my eyes. But 
when the portion of the sacred Scriptures, which came in 
course, began to be read, the Holy Spirit, who spake in the 
Prophets, furnished me with the ability of bringing something 
before you worthy of so large an assembly, of your expecta- 
tion, and of the merits of the holy martyrs. 

" The heavens declare the glory of God." When this 
Psalm is read, it suggests to us, that not so much the 
material elements as celestial merits, seem to give forth a 
proclamation worthy of God. However, by the accidental 
reading of the place to-day, it has been made manifest what 
heavens they are that " declare the glory of God." Behold 
on my right hand, behold on my left, the very sacred relics ; 
see these men of a heavenly conversation ; behold these tro- 
phies of a lofty soul. These are "the heavens" which 
e< declare the glory of God." These are " the works of His 
hands" which "the firmament sheweth." For no worldly 
inducement, but the divine work of grace, exalted them to 
the firmament of their most sacred sufferings, and a consider- 
able time before, by the evidence of their manners and their 
virtues, announced their approaching martyrdom, inasmuch 
as they stood firmly against the lubricity of this world. 

" Paul was e a heaven/ who says, " our conversation is in 
heaven." James and John were l heavens/ They are called, 
in fact, e the sons of thunder/ and John, therefore, as ' a 
heaven/ saw " the Word" who " was with God." The Lord 
Jesus himself was a heaven of perpetual light when He declared 
the glory of God, — that glory which no one before had beheld. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDON1US APOLLINARIS. 547 

And therefore He said, " No one hath seen God at any time, 
except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the 
Father ; He hath declared Him." If you enquire, too, what 
are " the works of God's hands," hear Job saying, " the 
Divine Spirit who made me ;" and so, being strengthened 
against the temptations of the devil, he kept the track of an 
unshaken constancy. But let us come to the rest. 

" Day," saith he, " uttereth a word to day." Behold here 
true days, whom no nightly darkness interrupts. Behold true 
days, full of light and eternal splendour, who have uttered 
the word of God, not in a perfunctory discourse, but from 
their inmost heart, constant in confession, persevering in mar 
tyrdom. 

Another Psalm, now read, says, " Who is like unto the 
Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, and respecteth the low 
things in heaven and in earth ?" Truly God hath respected 
low things, who hath revealed to his church the relics of holy 
martyrs, which lay hid under the ignoble turf, whose souls 
are in heaven, their bodies in the ground, " Raising the poor 
out of the dust, and lifting up the beggar from the dunghill," 
whom you see how He hath placed " with the princes of His 
people." Whom else ought we to consider " princes of the 
people," except the holy martyrs, into the number of whom 
Protasius and Gervasius, men for a long time before unknown, 
are now preferred ; who will make the church of Milan, barren 
before of martyrs, to be now the joyful mother of many sons, 
by the titles and examples of their own passion. 

Nor is this at variance with the true faith, " Day unto day 
uttereth a word," soul unto soul, life unto life, resurrection 
unto resurrection. " And night unto night sheweth know- 
ledge," that is, flesh unto flesh, whose suffering has shewn 
unto all the true knowledge of the faith, — good nights, clear 
nights, which have stars, " For as one star difTereth from 
another star in brightness, so also is the resurrection of the 
dead." 

Truly it is not without reason that most men call this the 
resurrection of the martyrs. Yet let us see whether the 



548 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

martyrs have risen to themselves ; certainly they have done 
so to us. You knew it, when you saw, your ownselves, many 
persons cleansed from evil spirits ; a great number too, when 
they touched with their hands the raiment of the saints, freed 
from those sicknesses under which they laboured. You per- 
ceive the miracles of the old time revived, when, on the advent 
of the Lord Jesus, a greater measure of grace diffused itself 
over the earth. How many handkerchiefs are spread before 
us in triumph. How many garments which have acquired a 
healing virtue, by merely touching these most holy relics, are 
eagerly claimed ! Every one is glad to touch the utmost 
border of the place, and he who has touched it is made whole. 
Thanks to thee, Lord Jesus, that at this time thou hast aroused 
such spirits of the sacred martyrs when thy church stands in 
need of greater help. 32 All men may know what sort of 
champions I require, those who are able to fight for us, and 
who never fight against us. Such I have acquired for you, 
holy people, those who can profit all, and will hurt no one. 
Such defenders I am courting, 33 — such soldiers I have, — not 
soldiers of the world, but soldiers of Christ. No envy do I 
apprehend from such as these, whose patronage, as it is higher, 
so it is safer than any other. I wish such guards as these to 
those very persons who grudge them to me. Let them come 
then and see my body-guard. With arms like these I do not 
deny that I am surrounded. " Some trust in chariots, and 
some in horses : but we will be magnified in the name of the 
Lord our God." 

The course of the Divine Scripture relates that Elisha, when 
he was besieged by the army of the Syrians, told his trembling 
servant not to fear, " for," says he, " there are more for us 
than against us;" and to prove this, he requested that the 
eyes of Gehazi might be opened. As soon as they were opened, 
he saw that an innumerable host of angels were present with 

32 Alluding to the Empress Justina. 

33 This sentence, say the Benedictine editors, was ordered by Charlemagne 
to be inscribed upon a banner embellished with the figures of Gervasius and 
Protasius, and carried in procession for the sake of averting a plague. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 549 

the Prophet. As for us, although we cannot see them, yet we 
feel them. These eyes of ours were closed as long as the 
bodies of these saints were lying hid. The Lord hath opened 
our eyes; we have seen the auxiliaries by which we have 
often been defended. We did not see these allies, yet we had 
them. Therefore, whilst we were trembling, just as if the 
Lord had said, " See what great martyrs I have given you !" 
So, " with opened eyes, we behold the glory of the Lord," 
which is past, in respect of the sufferings of the martyrs ; but 
present, in the wondrous work which they perform. We have 
escaped, my brethren, from no small burthen of disgrace, the 
disgrace of having patrons without knowing them. We have 
found this one thing, in which we appear to outdo our fore- 
fathers, the knowledge of holy martyrs, which they lost, and 
we have recovered. 

Noble relics are brought up from an ignoble sepulchre ; 
trophies are displayed to heaven. The tomb is wet with 
blood ; the marks of the victorious gore appear to us ; the 
inviolate relics are discovered in their proper place and order ; 
the head torn from the shoulders. The old men now repeat 
to us that they heard formerly the names of these martyrs, 
and read the inscription. The city had lost its own martyrs, 
the city which had carried away others. Although this is the 
gift of God to us all ; yet I cannot deny the special regard 
the Lord Jesus has paid to my episcopate ; and as I am not 
worthy to be myself a martyr, I have acquired these martyrs 
for you. 

Let these triumphal victims advance into the place where 
Christ is the victim (hostia). 34 He is upon the altar who 
suffered for all ; they under the altar who were redeemed by 
His passion. This place I had designed for my own self; for 
it is becoming that the priest should lie where he has been 
wont to offer ; but I yield the right side to the sacred victims ; 

34 The note of the Benedictines on this place is curious. " Quid hoc loco 
expressius ad veram et corporalem Christi in altari sacro praesentiam proban- 
dam dici possit, sane non videmus. Omnia illius verba perpendant sectarii, 
et si quid eis insit sinceritatis ac bonae fidei, rem fatebuntur." 



550 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

that place was due to the martyrs. Let us bury, then, the 
very sacred relics, and carry them to dwellings worthy of them, 
and let us solemnize the whole day by faithful devotion." 

The people shouted out that the interment of the martyrs 
ought to be deferred to the Lord's day ; but it was at last 
obtained of them that it should be done on the day following. 
On the following day such was my second sermon to the 
people. 

I handled, yesterday, that little verse, u Day unto day 
uttereth a word," as far as my mind could reach its sense. 
To-day the Divine Scripture seems to have prophesied, not 
only in the former time, but at the present. For when I see 
your holy thronging kept up day and night, the oracles of the 
prophetic verse have declared that these are the days, yester- 
day and to-day, of which it is most opportunely said, " Day 
unto day uttereth a word ;" and these the nights, of which it 
is most suitably argued, that " night unto night sheweth 
knowledge." For what have you done on these two days 
but utter forth the word of God from the depth of your 
affections, and prove that you have the knowledge of the 
faith ? On which solemnity of yours those whose custom it 
is to do so, look with envy ; and because they cannot in their 
envious minds endure the celebrity you have thus acquired, 
they hate its cause ; and proceed to such a height of madness 
as to deny the merits of the martyrs, whose works even the 
demons confess. But this is not surprising, since such is the 
perfidy of unbelievers, that for the most part the confession of 
the devil is more tolerable. For the devil said, " Jesus, thou 
son of the living God, why hast thou come to torment us 
before the time ?" And when the Jews heard this, they never- 
theless denied the Son of God. And now you hear the demons 
crying out, and confessing to the martyrs, that they could not 
bear their punishment, and saying, i Why do you come and 
so terribly torment us V And the Arians say, ' These are not 
martyrs, nor can they torment the devil, or deliver any one,' — 
when the torments of the demons are proved by their own voice, 
and the benefits bestowed by the martyrs are declared by the 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 551 

healing of those who have been cured, and by the testimony of 
those who have been freed from the demons. They deny that 
the blind is restored to sight, but he denies not his cure. He 
says, ' I who saw not, now see.' He says, ' I am no longer 
blind,' and appeals to the fact. Those who cannot deny the 
fact, still deny the benefit. The man is well known ; his name 
is Severus ; when in health, he was an attendant on public 
funerals, and is a butcher by trade : he had resigned his 
office when this impediment happened. He calls those men 
as witnesses in whose service he was maintained — he summons 
them to testify to his visitation, having been witnesses of his 
blindness. He exclaims, that as soon as he touched the hem 
of the martyrs' vest, in which the sacred relics were wrapped, 
his sight was restored. Is not this similar to that which we 
read in the gospel ? For we praise the power of the author 
alone, nor does it signify whether it be a work or a gift — since 
the one supposes the other; for when He gives the power to 
others of performing a work, it is His name which operates. 
We read, therefore, in the Gospel, that the Jews, when they 
saw the blind man cured, called in the testimony of his 
parents. They asked them, " How is it that your son sees ?" 
To which he answered, " Whereas I was blind, now I see." 
This he said himself, " I was blind, and now see." Ask others, 
if you believe not me — interrogate strangers, lest you should 
think my parents are in a confederacy with me. The pertinacity 
of these men is more detestable than that of the Jews. They, 
when they doubted, at least asked his parents — these men 
secretly interrogate, but openly deny; not incredulous of the 
work, but of the Author. But I ask, what is it they do not 
believe, — that any persons are visited by the martyrs ? This is 
not to believe Christ, for He said himself, " Ye shall do even 
greater things than these ;" or do they deny these things to 
be done by those martyrs whose merits have long been 
notorious, and whose bodies have lately been discovered ? I 
ask, whether it is me they envy, or the holy martyrs them- 
selves? If me, then I ask, has this happened by virtue of 
any thing I have been able to do— by my agency — through 



552 FROM THE TIME OF L1BANIUS 

my name ? Why, then, envy me that which is not mine ? If 
the martyrs (for if they envy not me, it remains only that they 
must envy the martyrs), they shew that the martyrs could not 
have had the same faith which they profess. They could not 
envy the works of the martyrs without judging them to have 
been of a different faith from themselves; namely, of that 
faith which was by the transmission of our ancestors, which 
the demons themselves cannot deny, though the Arians do. 
We have heard to-day those who have received the imposition 
of hands saying, that no one can be saved unless he believe in 
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ; that he is dead, and as good 
as buried, who denies the Holy Spirit, who believes not the 
omnipotent virtues of the Trinity. The devil confesses this, 
but the Arians are unwilling to acknowledge it.. The devil 
says, l So let him be tortured who denies the deity of the 
Holy Spirit, as he is himself tortured by the martyrs.' I 
receive not a testimony from the devil, but a confession. He 
speaks unwillingly, but through compulsion and torment. 
What wickedness suppresses, suffering extorts. The devil 
yields to stripes, and the Arians still know not how to yield. 
How much have they suffered, and yet, like Pharaoh, they 
are hardened by their sufferings. The devil said, as we read 
in Scripture, " I know Thee who Thou art. Thou art the Son 
of the living God." The Jews said, " We know not who he 
is." The demons have said to-day, and so they did the last 
day or night, ' We know that ye are martyrs.' And the Arians 
say, ( We know not, we are unwilling to understand or believe.' 
The demons say to the martyrs, ' Ye have come to destroy 
us.' The Arians say, ' These are not the real torments of 
demons, but fictitious and contrived mockery.' I have heard 
of many contrivances, but this no man could ever feign — that 
he was a demon. What can be said of this, — that those who 
have received imposition of hands are thus agitated ? What 
room for fraud can be here — what suspicion of artifice ? But 
I do not use the voice of demons as a testimony to the martyrs. 
Their sacred passion is proved by its benefits. It has judges, 
but more, judges freed from corruption; and witnesses, but 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINAUIS. 553 

more, witnesses absolved. The better voice is that which is 
uttered by the sanity of those who came diseased. The better 
voice is that which their blood sends forth — for that blood has 
a sonorous voice, which reaches from earth to heaven. You 
have read the words of God, " The blood of thy brother 
crieth unto me." And this blood cries out by the evidence of 
its colour — it cries out by the proclamation of its work — it 
cries out in the triumph of the passion. Your petition has 
been granted, that we should defer the ceremony of entombing 
the relics from yesterday to this day. 



Who that holds sacred the memory of St. Ambrose would 
not wish that so revered a name had never been connected 
with this transaction, to which I will leave the reader to 
annex such epithets as he thinks may be most appropriate. 
There can hardly be more than one opinion of the merits of 
the above harangue. As a specimen of oratory it is upon a 
level with the story. In a more intelligent age it would surely 
have brought no credit to the miracle, and would have lent 
an advantage to the Arian and the infidel. 

But however we may account for any excess of credulity in 
Ambrose, he must be allowed to have been a person of general 
gravity and judgment, no less on matters of faith than of prac- 
tice. He was one of the acknowledged pillars of the church — 
a strenuous and able maintainer of the scriptural doctrine of 
the consubstantial Trinity, yet by no means exempt from some 
of the puerilities and eccentricities by which the age in which 
he lived was characterized. St. Augustine, who received bap- 
tism at his hands, and his early lessons from his lips, and was 
his great admirer and follower, has borne a strong testimony to 
the matter and manner of his teaching, in language peculiarly 
his own, and not easy to be translated. " Ejus eloquia strenue 
ministrant adipem frumenti divini, et lsetitiam olei, et sobriam 
vini ebrietatem." 35 

35 In his discourse on the 118th Psalm, some strange notions occur of a 
baptism by fire at the end of the world, quando per caminum ignis iniquitas 



554 FROM THE TIME OF LIBAMUS 

We must still do this great light of the church the justice 
to observe, that though some of his opinions were rather 
luxuriant and fanciful, and not of the safest tendency, his 
moral and social character was amiable and exemplary, and 
that the play upon his name by Erasmus was in many re- 
spects supported by the tenour of his conversation among 
men, no less than by the correctness of his great doctrines. 
" Ambrosius, according to his name, doth truly flow with 
heavenly ambrosia ; who is worthy of his title, i. e. immortal, 
not with Christ only, but also among men." If the following 
letter in the Benedictine edition of this father is justly attri- 
buted to him, it testifies remarkably to the soundness of his 
practical views of moral conduct. It appears to have been 
written to one of his disciples, and is in the following terms. 

" My dear Son, love your tears ; do not put them off: in 
proportion as you have been prompt to the commission of a 
fault, be prompt to lament it. Let nothing make you careless 
under a sense of sin. If you are unable to avoid, at least 
restrain anger. Great glory is it to spare, where you have the 
power of inflicting an injury. Do not retaliate upon one who 
has sinned against you, according to his faults ; knowing that 
judgment is coming upon yourself. Hate separates a man 
from the kingdom, withdraws him from heaven, casts him out 
of Paradise. In all your actions imitate the good, emulate 
the holy. Have always before your eyes the examples of the 
saints. Keep company only with the good, since if you are 
a companion of their conversation, you will become also the 
companion of their virtue. It is hazardous to be associated 



exuretur ; in which imagination he appears to have followed St. Hilary. In 
his books De Virginitate, De Institutione Virginis, and his Exhortatio Virgini- 
tatis, the estate of matrimony is placed in a light for which he has no scriptural 
warrant, or foundation in the experience of mankind. Add to this, that some 
peculiar opinions seem to have been entertained by this Father on the subject 
of adultery, which cannot be commended for their soundness, safety, or 
sobriety, and may serve as an exposition of the peculiar phrase of Augustine in 
characterizing his work " Sobriam vini ebrietatem.'' 1 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 555 

with those whose lives are bad ; better have their hate than 
their fellowship. An idle discourse quick Jy stains the thoughts ; 
and what is willingly listened to, very readily passes into 
practice. Let that only go from your lips which will carry 
no pollution to the ear. The mind is dependent upon the 
tongue; and is tried and proved by it; for out of the abun- 
dance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Withhold any word 
from utterance which edifies not the hearers; since he who 
represses not an idle word, is quickly drawn into mischief. 
Do not defile your own mouth with another's iniquity. Do 
not detract from one who has committed a fault, but give him 
counsel. Correct your own life by observing the lives of 
others. Defend the life of no man by giving it a false colour. 
Let neither stripes nor death itself terrify you, so long as your 
life is virtuous and pious. A curious spirit tends to hazardous 
presumption. Love rather to hear than speak ; and to listen 
than talk. They are equally culpable who consent to evil, 
and commit evil ; punishment will be the constant result of 
doing or acquiescing in wickedness. Whatsoever you do with 
sound discretion must be virtue ; but virtue not accompanied 
with prudence is in the same estimation as vice. Let your 
testimony injure no man. Let your conversation be irrepre- 
hensible, meriting the acceptance and commendation of all. 
Turn not aside from right judgment out of regard to any man, 
whether rich or poor. Look to the cause, and not the person. 
Distribute justice on a principle of proportionate retribution. 
He who pays regard only to present benefits has no prospect 
to future glory. In dispensing justice never lose sight of 
mercy. That justice is impious which makes no allowance 
for human frailty. Do not despise any case coming before 
you for judgment, and condemn no one on arbitrary grounds 
of suspicion. Human judgment is always liable to deception. 
Avoid honours which you cannot hold without blame. If 
honours exalt us, they make our crimes the greater. The 
higher our rank the more conspicuous is our delinquency ; 
and the lower we are, the nearer are we to pardon. No one 
administers worldly affairs without sin. It is a wonder if a 



556 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

man abounding in wealth cultivates quiet. He who entangles 
himself in the things of earth, separates himself from heaven. 
No man, at the same time, can cultivate God's favour and 
that of the world. It is hard to love both God and the world. 
Abstain from all commerce with him whom the world loves. 
Detach yourself from all business, as one dead to this world. 
As one buried to the world, have no care for it. While you 
are living, despise what after death you cannot retain. Have 
compassion upon all, without distinction ; for it is uncertain 
by compassionating whose case you may most please God. 
Take not from one to give to another ; nor exercise compassion 
at another's expense. Such commiseration brings no credit 
with it, but rather condemns you. The good you do, let it 
not be boastfully, but feelingly done ; for if praise is your 
object, your reward is forfeited. Rewards are promised to the 
just, in heaven, not during their stay on earth. Pay attention 
to whatever you read : and what you respect in reading, do 
not shew contempt for by your mode of living. 



The tone and tendency of the above letter, which is very 
like the discourse of Isocrates addressed to Demonicus, pre- 
sents Ambrose to us as a person very observant of the social 
duties, and practical moralities of life. It seems as if it was 
meant as a system of plain precepts for the guidance of one 
who had long been under his especial instruction, and was 
about to fill some place of ecclesiastical authority and respon- 
sibility. The rules may not be very new or surprizing ; nor 
are they set off by any antitheses, or other artifices of diction, 
for in counsel meant for the direction of daily conduct, use 
rather than ornament is to be consulted, and the mind is to 
be furnished with what it is to handle and apply, rather than 
with what it is to admire and applaud. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 557 



AMBROSIUSTO BELLIC1US : ON THE CURE OF THE MAN BLIND 
FROM HIS NATIVITY. 

You have heard, my brother, that Gospel read, in which it is 
related that the Lord Jesus, as he passed along, saw a man 
who had been blind from his birth. If the Lord saw him, he 
did not pass him by ; wherefore we ought not to pass by him 
whom the Lord thought should not be so passed by, especially 
a man blind from his nativity, which circumstance was not 
made a part of the transaction without a particular meaning. 
There is a blindness of the eyes which is the effect of disease, 
and which, after a time, is relieved. There is a blindness 
which is produced by a thickening of the humours, and this 
also, when the impediment is removed, is expelled by the 
medical art ; but when one born blind is cured, it is done that 
you may know that it is the effect of power, and not of art. 
The Lord gave the cure, he did not exert medical skill ; He 
cured those whom no one else could restore. How foolish 
then were the Jews, who asked whether the man himself had 
sinned, or his parents; considering the diseases of the body 
as the merited punishment of the sufferer. Therefore the 
Lord said, " Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, 
but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." 
Thus what was a defect of nature, it was in the power of the 
Creator to repair, who was the Author of nature. Whence he 
added, " As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the 
world." That is, all who are blind may see, if they take me 
for their light. Approach ye then, and be enlightened, that 
you may be able to see. 

In the next place, how are we to understand the fact, that 
He who gave up his life to the ruling authority, restored the 
dead to life by his own command, saying to the dead man, 
" Come forth," and Lazarus came forth from the sepulchre : 
saying to the paralytic, " Arise, take up thy bed," and the 
paralytic took up his bed, and began to carry that himself, 
in which his whole length had reposed : what, I say, could 



•558 FROM THE TIME OF LTBANIUS 

be intended by the fact, that he spat and made clay, and 
anointed the eyes of the blind, and said to him, " Go, wash 
in the pool of Siloam, which is by interpretation ( Sent :' he 
went his way, therefore, and washed, and came seeing." And 
what is implied by this ? Much, if I mistake not ; for he 
whom Jesus touches sees more than others. 

Observe in this transaction the divinity and sanctity of the 
Saviour. The light, as it were, touched the man, and light 
was imparted. As a Priest, by the figure of baptism, he ac- 
complished the mysteries of spiritual grace. He spat, that 
you might see that the interior of Christ was full of light. 
He who is cleansed by the interior of Christ, sees clearly. 
His saliva washes; his discourse washes; as you read in 
Scripture, " Now ye are clean through the word which I have 
spoken unto you." But in making clay and anointing the 
eyes of the blind, what else was designed but that He who 
out of clay formed man, restored man to health by anointing 
with clay ; and that this flesh of our clay, by the sacrament 
of baptism, received eternal life. Come you then to Siloam, 
that is, to him who was sent by the Father, as it is said, 
u My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me." Let Christ 
wash you, that you may see. Come to his baptism ; now is 
the very time; come with haste, that you may say, " I went, 
and washed, and I received sight;" that you may say, 
" Whereas I was blind, now I see ;" that you may say, as he 
said on whom light had been shed abundantly, " The night 
is far spent, the day is at hand." 

Blindness was night. It was night when Judas received 
the sop from Jesus, and Satan entered into him. It was 
night to Judas where the Devil was. To John it was day, 
when he reclined on the bosom of Christ. To Peter it was 
also day when he saw the splendour of Christ on the mount. 
It was night to others, but day to Peter. And truly to Peter 
himself it was night when he denied Christ. At last the cock 
crew, and he began to weep, in repentance of his error, for 
now the day approached. 

The Jews interrogated the blind man, " How were thine 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 559 

eyes opened ? Egregious folly ! They asked to be informed 
of that which they themselves saw. They asked how it 
could be done, when they saw the fact before them. " And 
they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple." Their 
reviling was his blessing, as their benediction would have 
been a curse. " Thou art his disciple," say they. They confer 
a benefit when they design an injury. Farewell, my son; 
continue to love us as you do, because we love you. 



The letter last produced is a fair specimen of St. Ambrose's 
manner of exposition. It seems to me (I speak it with un- 
feigned reverence towards a great and holy man) to savour 
too much of ingenuity for the perspicuous grandeur of the 
subject. The miracle commends itself sufficiently to our 
homage and admiration, without any need of human industry 
to elicit recondite meanings or allusions from the plain nar- 
rative. 



TO CERTAIN OF THE CLERGY WHO WERE IN DESPONDENCY 
ON ACCOUNT OF THE DIFFICULTIES AND LABOURS BY 
WHICH THEY WERE BESET. 

The minds of men are often in a stealthy manner so enfeebled 
and overcome by some slight obstacle, if things do not spon- 
taneously accord with their wishes and second their zeal, as 
to be induced to retire from their official stations ; which 
may be borne with in any other class of men, but which, in 
those who are engaged in divine employments, fills one with 
sorrow. For there are some in the clerical office into whom 
the enemy steals unawares ; so that, if in no other way he is 
able to beguile them, he may find his way into their wounded 
minds by insinuating thoughts such as these. " What does 
it profit me to remain in the ministry, to submit to injuries, 
to endure hardships, as if my own property was not enough 
to support me ; or, if property were wanting, as if I were not 
able to draw my living from some other source." By such 



560 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

thoughts as these even men of good morals are induced to 
withdraw from their situations in the Church. As if it was 
the only concern of a priest to provide for his expenditure, 
and not rather to lay up for himself a divine maintenance after 
his death ; although his will be the abundance after this life 
is over, who, safe in this world, has been able to contend 
against so many snares of his enemies as surround him here. 
Whence the Preacher says, " Two are better than one, be- 
cause they have a good reward for their labour ; for if they 
fall, the one will lift up his fellow." 36 Where are two better 
than one, unless where Christ is, and he whom Christ defends? 
Because, if he falls who is with the Lord Jesus, Jesus will lift 
him up. But with what meaning is it said, in their labours? 
Does Christ then labour? Truly He does labour who says, 
" I have laboured, crying out :" but He labours in us. " Jesus, 
therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the 
well." But how He labours, the Apostle teaches us by his 
own inferior example. " Who is weak, and I am not weak ?" 37 
And the Lord himself has taught us in his own words. " I 
was a stranger, and ye took me not in ; naked, and ye clothed 
me not." 38 He labours, that he may lift me up when falling. 
Thus in Elisha, the Lord went forth, and threw himself on the 
child, that He might raise up the dead body : in which we 
see the symbol, that Christ is dead with us that he might 
rise with us. Christ threw himself down even to our weak- 
ness and low estate, that he might lift us up. He cast himself 
down ; he did not fall, but he lifted up his fellow. For his 
fellows he made us, as it is written, " He was anointed with 
the oil of gladness above his fellows." Whence Ecclesiastes 
beautifully says, " For if they fall, the one will lift up his 
fellow. " He is not himself lifted up. Christ was not lifted 
up by another's help, but he raised himself. Lastly, He says, 
" Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." 
This He said, speaking of the temple of his body. Nor was 
He who did not fall raised up ; he who has fallen is raised up 

36 Eccl. iv. 9. 37 2 Cor. xi. 29. 38 Matt. xxv. 43. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 561 

by another; he needs assistance to lift him up, as the words 
that follow teach us, " But woe to him that is alone when he 
falleth, for he hath not another to help him up." Again, " If 
two lie together, then they have heat." We are dead with 
Christ, and therefore we live. Christ was dead with us, that 
he might warm us ; He who says, " I am come to send fire 
on the earth." 39 I was dead; but because in my baptism I 
was dead with Christ, I received the light of life from Christ. 
He who dies in Christ, being made warm by Christ, receives 
the vapour of life and resurrection. The child was cold, and 
Elisha warmed him with his spirit: he imparted to him the 
vital heat. He lay with him in sleep, that the quiet warmth 
of him who was thus symbolically buried with him might 
bring him to life. He, therefore, is cold who does not die in 
Christ : he cannot be warmed whom the glowing fire does not 
approach. Neither can he who has not Christ with him make 
another warm. 40 

AMBROSIUS TO SYRICIUS. 

It is very agreeable to me to receive letters from you. But 
when you employ one of our community in the Lord's service, 
as Syrus, our brother and fellow-presbyter, to bring your 
letters, my joy is doubled. But I wish this fruit could have 
been longer enjoyed ! for as soon as he came, he began to 
think of running back again; which, indeed, much abridged 
the pleasure I so much desired, but added greatly to the in- 
terest I felt in him. For I love those, whether Presbyters or 
Deacons, who, when they take a journey anywhere, never 
suffer themselves to be absent from their duty longer than 
necessity requires. For the prophet says, Non laboravi se- 

39 A most extraordinary application of the passage. 

40 The letter runs out in the same style to considerable length. It is another 
specimen of the manner in which this good man generally applies and expounds 
passages from the Scriptures in very remote senses, and such as create surprise 
in the simple student of divine lore. There is much rambling divinity in Am- 
brose's exercises of thought and fancy, correct as he certainly is in all the great 
dogmas. 

o o 



562 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

quens post te j — It has been no labour to me to follow thee. 41 
Who can feel it labour to follow Jesus, when He says, " Come 
unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will 
give you rest." Let us then always follow Jesus without 
ceasing. If we always follow him, we shall never faint ; He 
gives strength to those that follow him. The nearer, there- 
fore, you are to virtue, the stronger you will be. 

Often, when we are following Him, our adversaries say to 
us, " Where is the word of the Lord ? let it come now." 42 
But we are not tired of following, nor are turned aside by 
being opposed by such a subtle interrogation. This was said 
to the prophet when he was sent to prison, and immersed in 
a miry dungeon. But he only followed the more, and there- 
fore obtained the reward of victory ; thus he received the 
crown, because he felt it no labour to follow Jesus ; for " there 
is no labour in Jacob, nor sorrow in Israel." Farewell, and 
continue to love us ; for we love those that love us, and espe- 
cially our parent. 43 

AMBROSIUS TO SEGATIUS AND DELPHINUS, BISHOPS. 

Polybius, our son, on his return from the African coast, 
where he, with great reputation, exercised the proconsular 
jurisdiction, spent a few days with us, and inspired me with 
the deepest affection for him. Afterwards, when he was about 
to return, he requested me to write to each of you. I pro- 
mised it should so be done. And accordingly dictated an 
epistle, and gave it to him, addressed to both of you. He de- 
manded another letter. I said that, according to my custom, 
I had addressed it to both of you, in order that your minds 



41 In our authorized Bible, the words are, " As for me I have not hastened 
from being a pastor to follow thee ;" which is a strict translation of the Hebrew. 
Ambrose cites from the Vulgate and the Septuagint. Eyw <>e ovk £K07riaaa 
KaraKoXsBwv bmau) <rov. 

42 Jerem. xvii. 13. 

43 An appellation he gives to Syricius, whom in another letter he calls his 
brother, for they seem to be the same person, — probably the Bishop of Rome. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 563 

might be gratified, not by the number of the epistles, but by 
the conjunction of your names; nor could it be endured that 
you should be separated in words, when you are one in affec- 
tion ; and I thought it my privilege to use the compendium 
which this mutual love afforded. What more need be added i 
He still insisted upon another letter. I gave him another, that 
I might neither deny him what he required, nor alter my own 
usage. Thus he had what he might render to each ; for his 
only reason for requiring two letters was, that, when he had 
given a letter to one, he might not go empty-handed to the 
other; and I was thus enabled to discharge my duty to you 
of undivided attachment without the risk of offending either, 
or any punctilio as to the separate claims ; especially, too, as 
this mode of letter-writing is apostolical, as where one writes 
to many, as Paul to the Galatians ; and two write to one, as 
we find in Scripture, " Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and 
Timotheus his brother, to Philemon." I send health to you 
both. Love us, and pray for us, for I love you. 



FRIEND, AND THE BEARER OF LETTERS 
BETWEEN THEM. 

I have sent letters to you by Priscus. My friend Priscus has 
brought letters to me, and I have given letters to Priscus. I beg 
you to continue your wonted affection to this Priscus; and more 
than your wonted affection ; which I intreat for him, because 
you are to know that I myself make a great deal of my friend 
Priscus. My affection for him is of old standing (priscus 
amor 44 ). Commencing with our boyhood, it has grown and 
increased with our age. It was after a long lapse of years 
that I saw him again ; so that not only in name was he Pris- 
cus, but he came really priscus to me, by the long interval 
which had been interposed between our meetings. Farewell. 
Continue to love us, who love you. 

44 This pun, or play upon the word priscus, in so grave a man, is amusing 
and pleasing. 



564 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 



AMBROSIUS TO ALYPITJS. 

Antiochus, a consular man, delivered me your letters; nor 
have I neglected my duty to answer them, for I sent letters 
by some of my people, and, if I mistake not, another oppor- 
tunity presenting itself, I despatched a duplicate. But be- 
cause I feel that the offices of friendship ought not to be 
measured out, but piled up, I thought it behoved me, espe- 
cially as the bearer was returning, who had brought me so great 
a present of letters from you, to charge him with the carriage 
of some communication from me, that I towards both of you, 
and he to you especially, might be acquitted, since he was 
under an obligation to give you back as much as he had re- 
ceived. Farewell, and continue to love those who love you. 

AMBROSIUS TO ANTON1US. 

You are never silent to me, nor do I ever complain that I am 
cast off, by your omitting to write to me, because I know 
assuredly that I always have a place in your bosom. For as 
you bestow upon me what is of more value, how can you deny 
me that which is often lavished upon many, not so much out 
of the habit of friendship, as the interchange of business ? I 
judge of your mind by my own, so as to be persuaded that I 
am never absent from you, as you are not from me ; for we 
adhere to each other in our thoughts. I never think that our 
correspondence ceases, as I am daily conversing with you, 
directing my eyes, my affections, and all my dutiful regards 
towards you. With these feelings I am delighted to hold 
converse with you ; for your letters, to speak openly with one 
who is a participator in all the sentiments of my bosom, make 
me rather ashamed. Wherefore, I intreat you to waive in 
future all expressions of gratitude, since the greatest reward I 
can receive for the discharge of my duty towards you will be, 
to be thought by you not to be deficient in acquitting myself 
of that duty. Farewell, and continue to love us, as you are 
beloved by us. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINAUIS. 5G5 



AMBROS1US TO CANDI DIANUS, HIS BROTHER. 

There is, indeed, the greatest splendour in your discourse; 
but to me it principally shines, in the affection it breathes 
towards me. It is in your epistles that I perceive the bril- 
liancy of your mind, my much loved brother. May the Lord 
bless you, and give you his grace; for I recognize in your 
letters your kind wishes, and not my own deserts ; for what 
deserts of mine can be on a level with such compositions as 
yours ? Love us, my brother, as you are loved by us. 



Ambrose was born about the year 333, and died on the 14th 
of April 397. A period full of great events, the greatest of 
which was the final triumph of Christianity over the polluted 
system of heathen idolatry, throughout the Roman world. 
The part which Symmachus took in opposition to Ambrose, 
brings him conspicuously before us ; and in him we recognize 
one of the greatest letter-writers in this last period of his 
country's destiny. His letters, which have been preserved, 
are numerous enough to be divided and arranged in ten books. 
He was invested with all the civil and sacerdotal honours of 
the Pagan constitution of Rome, possessed of great influence, 
a senator, pontiff, augur, proconsul of Africa, and prsefect of 
the city. In his letters, written in a florid style, he is sup- 
posed to have principally imitated Pliny, whom his flatter- 
ing friends pronounced him to equal or excel. 45 But in 
the opinion- of Gibbon, his luxuriancy consisted of barren 
leaves, without fruit, and even without flowers. Few facts 
and few sentiments can be extracted from his verbose corres- 
pondence." The passage in Gibbon, in which he introduces 
Symmachus to his readers, contains some interesting parti- 
culars respecting the religious state of Rome when Ambrose 
and Symmachus took the field, in the great and final contest 

45 Macrob. Saturnal. 1. v. c. i. 



566 FROM THE TIME OF LTBANIUS 

between inveterate error and effulgent truth. The Christians, 
says the historian, formed the least numerous party in the 
senate of Rome ; and it was only by their absence that they 
could express their dissent from the legal though profane acts 
of a Pagan majority. In that assembly, the dying embers of 
freedom were, for a moment, revived and inflamed by the 
breath of fanaticism. Four respectable deputations 46 were 
successively voted to the imperial court, to represent the 
grievances of the priesthood and the senate, and to solicit the 
restoration of the altar of Victory. And the conduct of this 
important business was entrusted to Symmachus, whose breast 
was animated by the warmest zeal for the cause of expiring 
paganism ; and his religious antagonists lamented the abuse 
of his genius, and the inefficacy of his moral virtues. The 
orator, whose petition to the Emperor Valentinian is extant, 
was conscious of the difficulty and danger of the office which 
he had assumed. He endeavours to seduce the imagination of 
a young prince by displaying the attributes of the goddess of 
victory ; he insinuates that the confiscation of the revenues 
which were consecrated to the service of the gods, was a 
measure unworthy of his liberal and disinterested character; 
and maintains that the Roman sacrifices would be deprived 
of their force and energy, if they were no longer celebrated at 
the expense, as well as in the name of the republic. 

The philosophic historian concludes his draught of this 
celebrated letter in the following descriptive terms. " Even 
scepticism was made to supply an apology for superstition. 
It was argued that the great and incomprehensible secret of 
the universe eludes the enquiry of man; and every nation 
seems to consult the dictates of prudence, by a faithful attach- 
ment to those rites and opinions which have received the 
sanction of ages. If those ages have been crowned with glory 
and prosperity, if the devout people have frequently obtained 

46 The first, in 382, to Gratian, who refused them audience. The second, 
384, to Valentinian, when Ambrose and Symmachus were combatants. The 
third, 388, to Theodosius. And the fourth to Valentinian II. See Lardner. 
Heath. Test. iv. 372. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 567 

the blessings which they have solicited at the altars of the 
gods, it must appear still more advisable to persist in the 
same salutary practice, and not to risk the unknown perils 
that may attend any rash innovations. The test of antiquity 
and success was applied with singular advantage to the religion 
of Numa ; and Rome herself, the celestial genius that presided 
over the fates of the city, is introduced by the orator to plead 
her own cause before the tribunal of the emperors. 

' Most excellent princes/ says the venerable matron, ( fathers 
of your country ! pity and respect my age, which has hitherto 
flowed in an uninterrupted course of piety. Since I do not 
repent, permit me to continue in the practice of my ancient 
rites. Since I am born free, allow me to enjoy my domestic 
institutions. This religion has reduced the world under my 
laws. These rites have repelled Hannibal from the city, and 
the Gauls from the capitol. Were my grey hairs reserved for 
such intolerable disgrace ? I am ignorant of the new system, 
which I am required to adopt, but I am well assured that the 
correction of old age is always an ungrateful and ignominious 
office.' 

" The fears of the people supplied what the discretion of 
Symmachus had suppressed ; and the calamities which afflicted 
or threatened the declining empire were unanimously imputed 
by the pagans to the new religion of Christ, and of Constan- 
tine. But the hopes of Symmachus were repeatedly baffled 
by the firm and dexterous opposition of Ambrose ; who forti- 
fied the emperors against the fallacious eloquence of the 
advocates of Rome. In this controversy, Ambrose conde- 
scended to speak the language of a philosopher, and to ask 
with some contempt, why it should be thought necessary to 
introduce an imaginary and invisible power, as the cause of 
those victories, which were sufficiently explained by the valour 
and discipline of the legions. He justly derides the absurd 
reverence for antiquity, which could only tend to discourage 
the improvements of art, and to replunge the human race into 
their original barbarism. From thence, gradually rising to a 
more lofty and theological tone, he pronounces that Christi- 



568 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

anity alone is the doctrine of truth and salvation ; and that 
every mode of polytheism conducts its deluded votaries, 
through the paths of error, to the abyss of eternal perdition. 
Arguments like these, when suggested by a favourite bishop, 
had power to prevent the restoration of the altar of victory ; 
but the same arguments fell, with much more weight and 
effect, from the mouth of a conqueror; and the gods of 
antiquity were dragged in triumph at the chariot-wheels of 
Theodosius. In a full meeting of the senate, the emperor 
proposed, according to the forms of the republic, the important 
question, whether the worship of Jupiter, or that of Christ, 
should be the religion of the Romans/' 

The historian proceeds with his narration thus. " On a 
regular division of the senate, Jupiter was condemned and 
degraded by the sense of a very large majority ; and it is rather 
surprising that any members should have been found bold 
enough to declare, by their speeches and votes, that they 
were still attached to the interest of an abdicated deity. The 
hasty conversion of the senate must be attributed to super- 
natural or sordid motives ; and many of the reluctant prose- 
lytes betrayed, on every favourable occasion, their secret dis- 
position to throw off the mask of odious dissimulation." 

Such were some of the remarks of Gibbon on an occurrence 
greatly distinguished among those which the history of these 
times has preserved to us. It took place in the year 388 a.d. 
which may therefore be considered as the period of the com- 
plete conversion of the Roman state. Till the time of Gratian 
the Christian emperors had permitted themselves to be invested 
with the dress and dignity of the supreme pontiff; but Gratian 
put an end to all these symbols of the ancient superstition, 
and abolished a long train of rites, ceremonies, and offices, 
which still maintained in existence a large portion of the 
external fabric of heathenism. The augurs, the vestals, the 
flamens, the fraternities of the Salians and Lupercals, and 
many other sacerdotal and civil institutions, which had been 
continued from the reign of Numa to that of Gratian, termi- 
nated with the accession of that emperor ; the early days of 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 569 

whose government were marked by a zeal beyond that of his 
predecessors in the cause of Christianity. But paganism was 
still in name and usage the constitutional religion of the 
empire. In the chamber or hall where the senate assembled 
still stood the statue and altar of Victory — the stately figure 
of a female, standing on a globe, with a crown of laurel in her 
hand ; and on this altar the senators were sworn to observe 
the laws of the empire. The altar of Victory had been removed 
by Constantius, restored by Julian, and again ejected by 
Gratian. Still, however, paganism, either wholly or in part, 
was the religion of the majority of the senate, which continued 
to solicit the restoration of this cherished monument of heathen 
grandeur. 

To the Emperor Theodosius was reserved the glory of 
establishing the Christian faith upon the ruins of the old 
superstition, not only in Rome but throughout the provinces. 
His decrees were decisive and peremptory against the auguries, 
the sacrifices, and all the services and ceremonies of the 
heathen temples. The fabulous throng of deities with which 
the heavens had so long been peopled by superstition was 
discarded, and allowed a place only in the machinery of poetry 
and the province of fiction. 

I have dwelt a little on the general state of this period of 
the Roman history, which was at this epoch the history of 
the world, the better to shew the circumstances in which the 
persons were placed whose correspondence is now to be set 
before the reader. It was a period much distinguished by a 
kind of ambition in the graces of letter-writing ; and, as is 
always the case with every attainment coupled with the vanity 
of display, it became disfigured by much affected ornament 
and inflated common-place. The letters interchanged between 
Symmachus and Ausonius will support this observation. They 
were both courtiers, and both learned men. Ausonius was 
the tutor and familiar friend of the Emperor Gratian, and 
a considerable poet, though some of the products of his pen 
deserve only to be mentioned with execration. Symmachus 
was, as has sufficiently appeared, a decided pagan, but Auso- 



570 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

nius seemed to be half christian and half heathen, in so much 
that, in the various mention of him by critics and historians, 
he passes under both these denominations. The probability- 
is, that he possessed but little concern for the prevalence of 
the one or the other belief, so as at the shrine of his own 
vanity there was enough of the worship of adulation. 

SYMMACHUS TO AUSONIUS. 

You desire me to write longer letters ; and in this desire you 
testify your affection for me. But I am too conscious of the 
poverty of my intellect not to adopt, in my correspondence 
with you, a discreet brevity, rather than proclaim in many 
pages the sterility of my resources. And what wonder if my 
store is impoverished, after being so long without the advan- 
tage of any communication from you, either in poetry or prose. 
Until I am in your debt on our literary account, how can you 
fairly charge me with a long interest. Your divine verses on 
the Moselle 47 is in the hands and bosoms of multitudes, but I 
was to be favoured only with a glimpse of it. Why, I would 
ask, was I to be denied this privilege ? Was it because I am 
a stranger to the Muses, and incapable of discerning the 
merits of such a performance, or too envious to do it justice? 
You have taken from me the credit either of my discernment, 
or my candour. I would have you to know, however, that, in 
spite of your interdict, I have intruded myself into the secret 
of your performance ; and I could almost have wished to hide 
from you my opinion of it, that so I might revenge myself 
upon you by my silence, but the sense of injury has been sunk 
at once in my admiration of this poem. I became acquainted 
with the Moselle when I was following the standards of our 

47 The poem of Ausonius on the river Moselle was his principal work. It 
contains many very vigorous verses, and must be acknowledged to be written 
throughout with great freedom, force, and elegance. He filled successively the 
highest offices of the state : and when consul, being at Treves, he was so 
pleased with the amenity of the river abovementioned, as to make it the sub- 
ject of celebration in an extended poem. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLL1NARIS. 571 

immortal princes, and considered it upon a par with many 
of our great, though not with our greatest rivers : but you 
have raised it by your illustrious verses to a dignity above the 
Egyptian Nile ; — in your poem it has a more luxurious fresh- 
ness than the frigid Tanais, and a brighter transparency than 
our own Fucinus. 48 I am so well acquainted with your fond- 
ness for this river, that, did I not know how incapable you are 
of falsifying facts, even in a poem, I should not have trusted 
your accounts of its origin, or its course. But pray let me 
ask you where you have discovered those multitudes of fishes; 
as diversified by their names as by their colours, magnitudes, 
and flavour; to which, it must be owned, you have given 
somewhat of a painted life and beauty, beyond the gifts of 
nature : and how comes it that, although I have often been a 
guest at your table, where, among the many objects that have 
attracted my attention, the things presented to the palate were 
not the least, I have never met with the kind of fishes you 
describe in your poem. Having given birth to these fish in 
your poem, why have you not given them to your friends 
among the dishes at your table. 

Joking apart, I solemnly aver, that I rank your work with 
the productions of Maro. But I will no longer dwell on 
your praises, forgetful of my own wrongs, lest your glory 
should receive this further accession — that it compels the 
admiration of one whom you have offended. If you shall 
thus continue to spread abroad your productions, without 
admitting me to a participation, I must be content to owe my 
enjoyment to the kindness of others. Farewell. 



THE SAME TO THE SAME. 

If I could, without interruption, employ myself wholly in 
proclaiming your deserts, I should still seem to myself to have 
imperfectly discharged my obligation in this respect ; so far is 

48 A lake in Italy, in the country of the Marsi, in the further Abruzzo. 
Plin. iii. 12. 



572 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

my duty towards you from being a work at which I repine. But 
though this is an employment which well becomes the vene- 
ration in which I hold your superiority ; yet, remember, you 
are not to expect this homage and devotion without some 
returns of grace and favour on your part. Now see on what 
these observations are meant to bear. It is a long time since 
you have furnished me with any thing from your pen to read 
and meditate upon : and the excuse you offer is the engrossing 
duties of your office of pretorian prefect. It is true — you 
have been deservedly called to a jurisdiction of supreme im- 
portance ; but your great abilities are more than equal to all 
the business which your brilliant fortune has brought with it. 
Be persuaded, therefore, not to withdraw your attention wholly 
from those elegant employments, which are so far from being 
troubles to men of business, that they are the best alleviators 
of their troubles. Farewell. 



THE SAME TO THE SAME. 

As in many things our ancestors manifested their wisdom, so 
did they conspicuously in this — that they placed together the 
temples of Honour and Virtue, like twin sisters; intending 
thereby to shew what we see exemplified in you, that where 
we find the rewards of honour there we find also the merits of 
virtue. And not far from these stands the shrine of the 
Camense, with their sacred fountain, to denote the tendency 
of liberal learning to promote our political advancement. The 
reasons of your own advancement may be read in these lessons 
and institutes of our ancestors. It is your gravity of morals, 
and your resemblance to the model of ancient discipline, which 
have raised you to the curule seat. Many will by your ex- 
ample be taught to rely upon solid accomplishments, genuine 
merit, and correct learning. History, indeed, abounds with 
instances of the niggard hand with which princes have rewarded 
the abilities which have adorned their own annals. The Stagi- 
rite was nothing the better for the* brilliant successes of his 
all-conquering pupil ; and it was a great blemish on the cha- 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 573 

racter of Fulvius, that out of his iEtolic spoils a cloak was 
the only gift bestowed on Quintus Ennius. 49 Nor did the 
second of the Africani do more for Pansetius, nor Rutilius 
for Opillus, Pyrrhus for Cineas, or Mithridates for Metro- 
dorus : these all let their instructors in the liberal arts go 
without their reward. But our truly erudite emperor, abound- 
ing in wealth and honour, has rewarded you in the proportion 
of your merits. In the midst of my joy in hearing of your 
prosperity, what words can declare how vexatious I feel it to 
be prevented from being with you at this juncture. I am 
sore afraid lest, by a wrong construction of the motives of my 
absence, you may be induced to doubt the sincerity of my 
congratulations. I longed with the greatest impatience to 
transport myself to you. But enfeebled by indisposition, I 
have been afraid to undertake a long journey, with rough 
accommodations on the road, the days growing shorter and 
colder, and other such like inconveniences. If you feel as a 
sincere friend towards me, I entreat you to be candid in the 
light in which you view these excuses. It is somewhat doubt- 
ful whether, after this conduct on my part, notwithstanding 
my reasons above given, I shall ever again rise as high in 
your favour as heretofore. My present care is to avoid giving 
you any just ground for complaint; and having done that, I 
am at ease. 

SAME TO SAME. 

After your long silence, I expected as well as desired longer 
letters ; for it is agreeable to the changeable character of all 
human things that scarcity should be followed by abundance. 
But my hopes were nevertheless disappointed; for your last 
was about a page in length. It was, indeed, sprinkled with 
Attic salt, and fragrant as thyme ; but it reminds me of those 
sparing repasts w h ic h may suffice to stay the stomach, but 



49 Q. Ennius, the author of tragedies, comedies, annals, and satires, born 
about", 238 years b.c. followed M. Fulvius Nobilior in his expedition to 
iEtolia. 



574 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

not to appease hunger. What if I were to ask of you a plen- 
tiful meal, a feast of the Salii (saliare convivium), a substan- 
tial board ; would you put me off with a second course of 
little delicacies only ? Remember what the Greek aphorism 
says, " With nutriments ever so sparing and light, a man may 
be kept from death, but not supported in strength." You seem 
to fear lest I should make no account of your occupations. 
Well then you are Questor, I remember ; one of the Emperor's 
Council, I know. Add to these, if you please, a thousand 
other engagements. It never yet has happened that labour 
has worn down your faculties, or care blunted your benignity, 
or use exhausted your resources. If you never repose from 
your daily toils, surely you will snatch an interval from sleep 
before the day begins to bestow upon your friends. But why, 
for want of something more to the purpose, do I allow myself 
to run on in this idle way ? I will take for my example your 
last letter, as your other excellent habits. Perhaps you may 
be too much occupied to read long letters ; and I think it 
must be so, for this reason, that he who has not leisure to 
write, can have as little to read. Farewell. 

SAME TO SAME. 

Your letters, which I received during my stay at Capua, 
delighted me by the proof they gave of your erudition. To 
their own natural gaiety were superadded the suavity of the 
Ciceronian style ; nor can I forbear to mention among their 
recommendations the praise they bestow upon the performances 
of my pen, more flattering, I fear, than true. I am in doubt 
which most to admire — the grace which breathes in your 
eloquence, or that which glows in your bosom. In truth, you 
so surpass others in the elegancies of expression, that one is 
afraid to answer your letters. And yet so kind is your appro- 
bation of my humble performances, that I cannot, with com- 
mon gratitude, be silent. But what to do I don't know ; for 
if I should dilate upon your excellencies, I shall appear to be 
inviting a regular commerce of flattery; and to be not simply 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 575 

an approver, but an imitator of the kind things you say to me. 
At the same time, that which you do without any ostentatious 
motive, one is almost afraid to applaud, lest one might seem 
to treat the act as done to attract applause. One thing, how- 
ever, 1 must beg you to receive as a plain unquestionable 
verity — that there is no man upon earth whom I love more 
cordially than yourself. By this honourable pledge you hold 
me for ever engaged. But I cannot but think that you shew 
an excess of diffidence and reserve when you complain of my 
betraying your authorship ; for it is easier to close the mouth 
upon live coals, than to keep the secret, when we know, and 
others do not, the author of a luminous work. Indeed it 
seems to me that, when an author has launched his perfor- 
mance, he has given up all right of concealment ; having 
published his work, he ought to consider himself as per- 
sonally before the public, and his composition as a thing 
quite open and free. Do you fear the venom of some envious 
reader ? — the bite of some merciless tooth ? Your singular 
felicity it is, that, as favour has not given you your celebrity, 
so envy cannot rob you of it. Your merit is too well esta- 
blished to depend upon the censorious or candid judgment of 
your readers. Henceforth, then, discard all groundless fears; 
and give free exercise to your pen, that you may be often 
before the public. Suppose you put forth some didactic or 
hortatory poem in my name. Put my silence to the test in this 
way, though I don't know whether I could answer for my 
keeping the secret even then ; however, I might be interested 
in doing so ; for I well know what pleasure there must be in 
being the means of bringing out anything which your mind 
had deliberately composed and approved. One has a sort of 
partnership in the praise of another man, when one is the first 
to present to the public the products of his intellect. It is 
thus that dramatic writers acquire their greatest glory ; and 
such actors as Roscius and Ambivius, 50 in doing justice to the 

50 The name of Roscius is familiar to all. Ambivius Turpio was a cele- 
brated comic actor, mentioned in Cic.de Senectute, and in the dialogue de 
Oratoribus, sect. 20. 



576 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

sentiments of others, have advanced their own reputation. 
Do, therefore, I pray, in this manner employ your leisure in 
satisfying my cravings for fresh productions of your pen. And 
if, still afraid of appearing boastful, you are in dread of your 
authorship's transpiring through some talkative tongues, pray 
persist in your concealment for my benefit, that I may safely 
enjoy the credit of your writings. Farewell. 



A letter of Theodosius the emperor to the same Ausonius is 
expressed with much grace and dignity. 

THEODOSIUS AUG. AUSONIO PARENTI. 

The affection with which I regard you, my much cherished 
parent, 51 conspires with my admiration of your talents and 
erudition, which are of the very highest order, to make me lay 
aside the usual reserve of other princes, and to send you a 
friendly epistle, written with my own hand. The object of 
which letter is to demand, not, indeed, as of royal right, but 
on the strength of our mutual attachment, not to let me be 
robbed of the gratification of reading your writings ; some of 
which were well known to me, but have now almost escaped 
from my memory by lapse of time. I am anxious not only to 
recal such to my mind, but I wish to be made acquainted 
with what you have since written, and of which so much is 
proclaimed by the voice of fame. I beg, then, for the love in 
which you hold me, that you will freely communicate to me 
the contents of your cabinet, following the example of the 
best writers, (with whom most assuredly you deserve to be 
classed,) who contended with each other in their forwardness 
to lay their works before Octavianus Augustus, — works, it 
must be owned, not always contributing in their tendency to 
the honour of that emperor, who, whether he admired them as 



51 The appellations of father and son were usually interchanged between 
preceptors and those who were instructed by them. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 577 

much as I do you, I do not know, but certainly he did not 
love them better. 



A letter or two of Ausonius to Pontius Paulinus, first his 
pupil, and afterwards bishop of Nola, celebrated for his taste 
and accomplishments, but more especially signalized by the 
retirement from the world, and devotional studies in which he 
passed the evening of his life, cannot fail to be interesting. 

AUSONIUS TO PONTIUS PAULINUS. 

How profitable to me, my son Paulinus, has been the com- 
plaint which you have madeybr me, for certainly it never 
would have been made by me. Fearing that the oil which 
you were so good as to send me had not satisfied me, you 
have supplied this assumed defect by doubling your present. 
Which comes now with the additional condiment of the Bar- 
celona pickle. By the by, you know I never would or could 
consent to call this by the name of muria, the term in vulgar 
use ; as the most scientific of the ancients, and those among 
them who have been scrupulous of using Greek terms, have 
adopted the word garum, without finding for it any Latin 
word. But there is one name for the liquor, which will, as 
between us, be appropriate, in whatever language I converse 
with you, and that is the liquor sociorum. 52 How kind and 
friendly it was in you thus to make me a partaker with you 
of those delicacies which appear to have but just come to your 

52 The muria was made from the fish called the thunny, salted, and ma- 
cerated, or dissolved ; and the garum, which was held in superior estimation, 
was made in a similar manner from the scomber, or mackrel ; though some 
say it was from the sturgeon. The garum was a Greek word. An inferior or 
common sort was made from any kind of small fish ; and was called alec. The 
garum was generally sent to Rome by one or other of its allies, and thence 
called garum sociorum, the best being furnished by Spain; where it seems 
afterwards to have been the same as that which was called anchovas. Garo 
de succis piscis Iberi. Horat. Sat. viii. lib. 2. And see Mart. lib. xiii. 102, 
103. Edit. Schrev. in Not. 

P P 



578 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

hands. O, my friend, thou art more to my taste than the 
sweetest condiment : the best favour you can bestow upon me 
is your own society, which deserves to be cherished by all 
that know you with a paternal embrace. Some may think 
such courtesies as these are the marks of a liberal mind, and 
sometimes they may be so, though perhaps not often. But 
that which your pen imparts, by the erudition of your epistles, 
by the sprightliness of your poetry, by the vigour of your 
invention, and by your power of amplification, I affirm to be 
out of the reach, while it merits every effort of imitation. As 
to the little work you have sent me, I will do what you desire. 
I will do my very best towards giving the whole a still higher 
polish ; and although, in your hands, it has been brought to 
its perfection, I will still try to bestow upon it a superfluity 
of lustre, out of deference to your wishes rather than with the 
hope of improving what is already perfect. In the mean 
time, that your letter carrier (tabellarius) may not return 
without a little poetical corollary, I have amused myself with 
writing a few playful iambics, while I am entering upon the 
composition in heroic measure, which you desire me to under- 
take. The lines I now send you were, I solemnly assure you, 
produced at one sitting; a haste of which the poem itself 
bears sufficient marks, yet it has had no attention bestowed 
on it since its first coming from my pen. 

SAME TO SAME. 

Multiplied occasions of thankfulness to you, my son Pau- 
linus, produced by circumstances, but more perhaps by your 
goodnature and indulgence, have the effect, I am ashamed to 
confess, rather of encouraging than checking my audacity ; as 
you will perceive in the application I am about to make to 
you in behalf of Philo, formerly my agent ; who having 
deposited some merchandize, collected by purchase from 
various countries, with Hebromagus, using the accommoda- 
tion which had been granted him by some of your people, is 
on a sudden threatened with expulsion. But unless you shall 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 579 

indulge him with a longer stay at this place for his conveni- 
ence, and the grain he has purchased can be conveyed in a 
pinnace, or some vessel, quite to the town, so that the Luca- 
nians may be relieved from the want they are in, all the family 
of this man of letters will have less in future to do with the 
oratio frumentaria of Tully than the shifts of the Circulio of 
Plautus. The more easily to prevail with you to grant my 
request, or to frighten you by the dread of molestation if you 
refuse it, I have sent a letter to you in iambics, composed by 
myself, and authenticated by my seal, lest if my letter should 
come to you without being so accredited, you might suspect 
the carrier to be a person suborned to practise an imposition 
upon you. Farewell. 



Pontius Moropius Paulinus was in all respects a man of 
lively and amiable character, bound to Ausonius, his senior in 
age, by the most friendly ties, to whom he delights to acknow- 
ledge his obligations in the conduct of his early studies. They 
were equally devoted to the cultivation of general literature, 
and more especially to the graces of poetical composition, 
being in the constant habit of corresponding in verse, and 
submitting to each other their respective performances. Auso- 
nius was a man of pleasure, and of the world ; he passed his 
vigorous years in the courts of Gratian and Theodosius, in a 
gay and ambitious course, half heathen and half Christian, 
and retired, in his old age, to literary ease and privacy, in his 
native city, Bourdeaux. 

Paulinus, who was also born at Bourdeaux, sought prefer- 
ment at Rome, and rose so rapidly in his political career, that, 
while young, he was promoted to the consular rank. In 
middle life, he became so deeply impressed with the truths of 
Christianity, that he determined to enter the church. He 
was accordingly baptized, and was ordained a presbyter, in 
which capacity he was greatly distinguished by his piety, 
charity, and self-denial. He was afterwards consecrated 
bishop of Nola in Campania. His secession from Rome and 



580 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

secular employments occasioned his separation from his old 
friend and instructor, Ausonius, who seems to have considered 
the loss of his society and correspondence as a heavy misfor- 
tune, which he makes the subject of bitter complaint in his 
poems and letters. As far as we can judge, from some parting- 
epistles of Paulinus, he was as much affected as his friend by 
the necessity of the separation, while he submitted to it as the 
necessary result of his conversion. He died A. d. 431, aged 
seventy-eight. The talents of Pontius Paulinus were held in 
the highest esteem by Ausonius, who addresses him, during 
the glowing period of their intellectual commerce and mutual 
admiration, in the following letter, which is inserted the better 
to mark the transition in the character of Paulinus. 

AUSONIUS TO PAULINUS. 

I dare say you do not see what I mean by so many verses. 
In truth, neither do I myself very well know, though I 
suspect, my own meaning. It was on the night next pre- 
ceding the 19th cal. of January when your letter was brought 
to me ; full of taste and scholarship. To this you have 
appended that most delightful production of your muse, in 
which you have compressed the history of the kings of Rome, 
written in three books by Suetonius, 53 into an epitome, with 
such elegance, that you alone seem to have attained to that 
excellence which it is hardly allotted to man to reach — brevity 
without obscurity. How skilfully, how aptly, how correctly, 
and how harmoniously have you blended these opposites. 
What I particularly admire in you is the fidelity with which 
you have observed the rules of the true Roman accentuation of 
syllables, taking care to preserve the marks which regulated 
the enunciation of the genuine and primitive language. 54 

53 These books of Suetonius, and Paulinus's epitome are lost. 

54 Some of the Roman scholars were very tenacious of the antiquity of their 
language, refusing to acknowledge its derivation from the Greek. This was 
especially the opinion of Varro, the great Roman antiquary and etymologist. 
See Cic. Acad, quest, lib. i. 3. But there are proofs enough of its iEolic 



TO THE TIME OF SIDON1US APOLLINARIS. 581 

But what shall I say of your eloqueuce ? I will risk the 
positive assertion, that not one of the Roman youth can rank 
with you in the graces of poetical expression. This certainly 
so appears to me. If I say too much, bear with me, consider- 
ing I speak as a father of his son ; 55 and do not ask for a rigid 
judgment, where the dictates of affection would be more in 
place. But be assured that, though I am under the influence 
of warm affection, it does not prevent me from judging impar- 
tially and scrupulously. Oblige me, I beg, frequently with 
this sort of present, with which I am both delighted and 
honoured. You are encouraged to proceed by the flattering 
voice of the public ; unless you will persist in calling that 
rashness which is only the vigour and promptitude of con- 
scious merit ; but I, forsooth, am to be called considerate, 
worthy of the utmost filial homage, a model of sound pru- 
dence : while in sober verity, the reverse of all this is the 
truth ; for you know how to reach the summit without 
danger of falling. My vacillating age thinks it enough if it 
can make shift to keep its ground, I have dispatched this 
letter, the first thing this morning, to comply with the urgent 
haste of the postman. If more leisure had been allowed me, 



origin. A further infusion of the Gre.ek was introduced into the Roman lan- 
guage by the Dorians, who fixed themselves in the south-eastern part of Italy, 
and whose dialect was little different from that of the iEolians. See Dionys. 
Hal. Antiq. Rom. 1. i. throughout. 

That the Latin tongue admitted less variety of tone than the Greek is 
conceded on all hands. The acute had three places in the Greek — the ulti- 
mate, penultimate, and ante-penultimate : whereas the Latin admitted only 
two syllables to have the acute accent — the penultimate and ante-penultimate. 
Thus Scaliger, Caus. Ling. Lat. c. 58, " Latini suis libris omnes testati sunt 
nullam apud nos supremam syllabam acui." The Roman language is allowed 
to have been inflexibly barytone, as was the iEolie Greek, from which it 
descended. Athenaeus says, the Romans follow the iEolians even in the tone 
of the voice. 'Pwjitaloi uravra touq AioXuq fiifioufxevoi, <hg real Kara tovq 
tovovq tt)q (f>ovt]Q. Lib. x. c. 6. Though the Romans did very seldom use 
accentual marks, yet it appears from Quintilian, and many other authorities, 
that accentation was considered by the Romans to be no less essential to the 
just pronunciation of their language than quantity. 

55 Ausonius and Paulinus address each other as father and son. 



582 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

I should have been delighted to let my pen run at random, for 
my own gratification, and to elicit more from you. 



Thus intimately connected and associated in the early period 
of their lives, the thoughts and interests of Ausonius and 
Paulinus took a very different direction in their maturer age. 
Ausonius first dissuaded, and then lamented in vain the deter- 
mination of his more virtuous friend to devote himself to the 
duties and exercises of a real Christian. The slow returns of 
a correspondence which used to be so unremitting and lively, 
accompanied often with sallies of poetical invention, became 
at last a very desponding theme with Ausonius. He begs his 
friend and pupil, rather than discontinue the correspondence 
from an apprehension of the censures of his new friends, to 
adopt some of those contrivances by which a communication 
might be secretly carried on ; and alludes to the Lacedemo- 
nian Scytale, and such like stratagems. 56 

The apology of Paulinus is full of sensibility and pious re- 
solution. 

PAULINUS TO AUSONIUS. 

Why, my father, do you recommend me to resume my inter- 
course with the Muses, to whom I have bid farewell? The 
access to a bosom devoted to Christ is closed against Apollo 
and the Muses. Time was when, united in our studies, with 

56 ut tibi nullus 



Sit metus: et morem missae, acceptaeque salutis 
Audacter retine. Vel si tibi proditor instat, 
Aut quossitoris gravior censura timetur, 
Occurre ingenio, quo ssepe occulta teguntur. 

******* 
Lacte incide notas : arescens charta tenebit 
Semper inaspicuas ; prodentur scripta favillis. 
Vel Lacedaemoniam Scytalen imitare, libelli 
Segmina Pergamei tereti circumdata ligno 
Perpetuo mscribans versu ; qui deinde solutus 
Non respondentes sparso dabit ordine for mas, 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 583 

unequal strength, indeed, but equal zeal, we strove together 
to rouse the God from his cave at Delphos, and to invoke the 
Deities of Song. We have prayed for the poets' inspiration 
on the tops of mountains, or in the silent groves; but my 
mind now feels the force of a very different influence — the 
force of a new conviction. A far greater Divinity has induced 
a change upon my sentiments and habits ; claiming to him- 
self what, in truth, he alone enables me to give — the energies 
of my being to the Great Author of it. He commands us not 
to waste our time in ease, or in the vain pursuits of letters, or 
worldly business, that we may have leisure to follow the 
guidance of his light, and practise obedience to his laws, 
which the craft of the sophist, the art of the rhetorician, and 
the figments of the poet, only tend to obscure. They only 
arm our tongues, and fill our minds with vain conceits, as 
little tending to enlighten the understanding as to save the 
soul ; for of what can they become possessed that is either 
good or true, who neglect the only source of what is both good 
and true, — that God whom none can see but in Christ. He is 
the light of truth, the way of life, the strength, the mind, the 
hand, the flower of the Father ; begotten of God, Maker of 
the world, the life-giver and death-destroyer to mortal men ; 
our great Teacher, God with us, and man for us ; clothed 
with our nature, and emplied of his own ; by an eternal com- 
merce between God and man, uniting both in himself. He, 



Donee consimilis ligni replicetur in orbem. 
Innumeras possim celandi ostendere formas, 
Et clandestinas veterum reserare loquelas, 
Si prodi Pauline times, nostrseque vereres 
Crimen amicitiae. Tanaquil* tua nesciat istud. 
Tu contemne alios ; nee dedignare parentem 
Adfari verbis. Ego sum tuus altor, et ille 
Prseceptor primus, primus largitor honorum 
Primus in Aonidum qui te collegia duxi. 



* Wife of Tarquinius Priscus, to whose ascendancy he is recorded to have 
owed his great fortune. Juvenal gives this name to all wives ruling their hus- 
bands. 



584 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

therefore, as a ray from heaven shining within us, purifies 
our corrupt humanity, renews the habit of our minds; gives 
us, in exchange for our former pleasures, the full recompense 
of chaste and pure enjoyment; and for this he claims, as his 
prerogative, the jurisdiction of our hearts, our tongues, and 
our opportunities. He has the sovereign right to be dwelt 
upon in our thoughts, — to be studied, trusted, read, loved, 
and feared by his creatures. Those vain tumults which are 
stirred in the bosom by the cares of this life, vanish before the 
confident expectation of the future life with God. Because T 
withdraw myself from worldly cares to be at leisure for God ; 
because He is the object of my study ; because I surrender 
myself to him, and trust to him for all things ; do not on that 
account call me indolent, or perverse, or guilty of neglect of 
duty. A Christian there cannot be without practical piety ; 
nor has piety anything but a name without Christianity. I 
may lay hold on Christ; I cannot display him before you; 
but it is to him that God has chosen that I should be indebted 
for all sacred privileges, and whatever can be named most 
precious. To you, by whom I was brought forward, favoured, 
and guided in my worldly course, I must avow myself in- 
debted for discipline, preferment, letters, language, office, re- 
putation ; — to you, my patron, preceptor, and father. But, 
you ask, why should I live at so great a distance from you ? 
and you are angry with my retirement. To this I answer, the 
step is either convenient, or necessary, or agreeable to me. 
On whichever of these accounts it has been taken, surely it is 
a pardonable step. Forgive one who loves you, if he adopts 
what seems expedient to him. Congratulate him if he has 
chosen the life most in accordance with his taste and dispo- 
sition. 



In a subsequent epistle, he takes a metrical leave of Au- 
sonius with this consolatory assurance : 

" Nunquam animo divisus agam ; prius ipsa recedet 
Corpore vita meo, quam vester pectore vultus." 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINAR1S. 585 

After his separation from Ausonius, the friendship and cor- 
respondence of Paulinus was withdrawn from the men of 
letters in Rome, and transferred to the dignitaries and lumi- 
naries of the Christian Church in the West, among whom 
Augustin and Jerom were the principal. His letters to Au- 
gustin are often full of spirit and elegance, though sometimes 
defective in the style and taste of their compliments. The 
habit of mutual adulation infected all the correspondence of 
that sera. Though the letters of Augustin have an unction 
of spiritual sensibility, and a vivacity of feeling and affection 
which impart to them great interest, sometimes reaching an 
elevation of true sublimity, and often very happy in expression 
and illustration, they are nevertheless frequently inelegant and 
ungraceful in phraseology, and crowded with conflicting me- 
taphors. We will produce a specimen or two of the corres- 
pondence between these two distinguished fathers. And first, 
from Paulinus and Therasia 57 his wife, to whom Ausonius 
alludes, as we have seen, under the soubriquet of Tanaquil, 
but who appears to have been the virtuous companion of an 
estimable husband. 



DOMINO FRATRI UNAN1MO, ET VENERABILI AUGUSTINO, 
PAULINUS ET THERASIA, PECCATORES. 58 

The love of Christ, which, though absent from each other in 
the body, unites us in the bond of a common faith, gives me 
a certain confidence in writing to you, which puts me above 
the natural influence of a timid disposition ; while your letters 
bring you with a sort of intimacy into the recesses of my 
bosom. These letters, abounding in erudition, and borrowing 
their sweetness from heaven, as the medicine and nourishment 
of my soul, we have the temporary possession of, in five books ; 
with which we are favoured by the blessed and venerable 
bishop Alipius, not for our instruction only, but for the benefit 
of a church, which includes many cities within its sacred su- 

57 A proof that celibacy was not at this time very strictly enforced. 

58 The peculiar style of the address appears best in the original. 



586 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

pervision. These books I treasure up for my constant perusal ; 
they are my delight ; from them I draw constant nourish- 
ment; not the food which perishes, but that which imparts 
the substance of eternal life, through the faith which unites 
us to the mystical body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith con- 
firmed by precept and example ; and, overlooking visible 
things, turns with longing towards those that are invisible, 
through that love which believeth all things according to the 
truth as it exists in God himself. O thou true Salt of the earth, 
by which our hearts are so seasoned as to resist the corruption 
of the world ! O Lamp, worthy to be placed on the Candela- 
brum of the Temple, which, spreading abroad among Christian 
states the light fed with the oil of gladness, dissipates the 
darkness of the heretics, dense as it is, and brings out truth 
from the shades which obscure it, into the purest light and 
splendour. 

You perceive, therefore, my beloved brother, how well I 
understand and know you; how greatly I admire you; and 
with what affection you are cherished by me, who daily thus 
converse with you through your letters, and feast upon your 
words. Well may your mouth be called the conduit of a 
living stream ; supplied by Him who is that Well of Water 
which springeth up unto everlasting life ; for which my arid 
soul has been long athirst, and thirsting turned to thee. My 
barren earth longs to be made fruitful by your overflowing 
abundance. And since you have sufficiently armed me against 
the Manichseans by your five books, if you have prepared de- 
fences against any other of the enemies of the Catholic faith, 
(for our great adversary, who has a thousand devices for 
accomplishing his purposes of evil, must be met by a resist- 
ance as varied as his forms of attack,) I beseech you to supply 
me with weapons, and deny me not the arms suited to one 
enlisted in the cause of righteousness. I am a sinner labour- 
ing with the burthen of my transgressions ; a veteran in tres- 
passes, but as a soldier belonging to the Eternal King, only a 
raw recruit. I have been up to this time a miserable follower 
after the wisdom of man. The dedication of my time and 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 587 

thoughts to learning and human prudence has made me in- 
sensible and dumb to my Creator. Having long lived among 
my enemies, and become vain in my imaginations, I have at 
last lifted up my eyes to the hills, inhaling the precepts of the 
law and the gifts of grace, from whence help has come to me 
from the Lord, who, not rewarding men according to their 
iniquity, hath given sight to the blind, and freedom to the 
captive ; hath put down the lofty, and exalted the humble and 
meek. 

I trust I am treading in the footsteps of the just, though 
with very inferior speed ; hoping, through your prayers, to be 
enabled to lay hold on the mercies of God. Guide, therefore, 
one who creeps upon the ground, and teach him to proceed in 
your own track. I wish you not to compute my age by reckon- 
ing from my natural, but from my spiritual birth : for my age, 
according to the flesh, is just that of the cripple cured by the 
Apostle, before the beautiful gate of the temple ; but if you 
count my years from the birth of the soul, my age is that of 
those infants who by their deaths typified the sacrifice of the 
Lamb, and auspicated their Lord's passion. And, therefore, 
as an infant in the word of God, as a babe in spiritual age, 
educate me by the nurture of your instruction, while I am 
drawing nutriment from the abundance of your faith, wisdom, 
and charity. In respect of our common office you are my 
brother; but if we look to the maturity of the powers of your 
mind, you are my father. Junior to me, it may be, in age, 
your prudence has crowned you with the honours of the hoary 
head. Comfort and strengthen, then, in the pursuit of sacred 
learning, and spiritual studies, one whose experience in these 
things is yet raw ; — who, after many dangers and shipwrecks, 
am hardly emerging from the waves of this world. Do you, 
who have your firm stand upon the stable shore, receive me 
to your bosom, as into a port of safety ; or, if you think me 
worthy so much honour, let us trust ourselves to the ocean 
together. In the mean time, as a plank hold me up while I 
am struggling with the perils of this life, and striving to 
escape from the gulf in which sinners are submerged. I have 



588 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

been careful to dispossess myself of all incumbrances, that, 
freed from the habiliments of the flesh, and the care of the 
coming day, I may, by the help of Christ, swim from out of 
the gulf which separates between me and my God ; and 
where my sins howl upon me with incessant fury. Nor do I 
boast to have performed this, for if I might glory, it would 
be in the Lord, who alone can fully accomplish what He 
teaches us to will. Though all that I have yet attained is 
an ardent desire to be made a lover of the goodness of God, 
which must depend upon the grace given me; yet, as far as 
in me lies, I have loved the beauty of the sanctuary, and had 
determined to seek a humble post in the house of my God ; but 
He who was pleased to separate me from my mother's womb, 
and to draw me from carnal friendships to his grace and 
favour, hath thought fit, for no merit of my own, to lift me 
from the mire and pool of misery, to place me with the princes 
of the people, and to give me a part and lot in Christ, so that 
I might be on an equality with you in office and station, 
however below you in merit. Assuming, therefore, not by 
my own presumption, but by the good pleasure and appoint- 
ment of God, fraternity with you, although ill deserving so 
great an honour, I am not disheartened, by the sense of my 
own un worthiness; because I am well assured, for I know you 
to be truly wise, that your relish is rather for the humble 
than the exalted things of this world : and on this ground, I 
trust, you will cordially accept the love which comes from so 
humble a source, and which, I presume, has now been con- 
veyed to you by Alipius, that highly favoured minister of 
Christ, who deigns to be called my father. He has, doubt- 
less, given you an example of loving us above our deserts, 
even before being acquainted with us ; who, although we were 
separated by a long interval of land and sea, yet, in the spirit 
of true love, which penetrates and diffuses itself everywhere, 
in spite of all impediments, has been able to realize our presence 
by his affection and converse. It was in the abovementioned 
present of your books that he gave me the first proofs of his 
affection, and of your christian benevolence. With what pains 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLTNARIS. 589 

did he strive to make me duly sensible of your piety ; not 
only using for that purpose his own persuasive words, but 
those specimens of your eloquence, and faith ; endeavouring, 
at the same time, to increase your affection for me by his own 
example. 

It is our wish, dear brother in Christ, worthy of all love and 
veneration, that the grace of God, as it now is, may be for 
ever with you. We send our affectionate greeting to all your 
house, and all your friends and associates, who emulate your 
virtues. The loaf which we have sent as a token of our love 
and affection, we beg you to bless by accepting. 



The letter of Paulinus to Alipius, a bishop of distinguished 
merit, and the particular friend of Augustin, is in a similar 
style of piety, humility, and affectionate feeling. He returns 
thanks for the books of Augustin against the Manicheans, 
which Alipius had procured for his perusal ; makes enquiries 
respecting Alipius, with a view, it would appear, to give an 
account of him to the world ; and communicates some par- 
ticulars of his own history, probably with an expectation that 
the biography was to be reciprocal. 

The letter is as follows. 



DOMINO MERITO HONORABILI, ET BEATISSIMO PATRI, 
ALIPIO, PAULINUS ET THERASIA PECCATORES. 

In your kind concern for us, you have exhibited an example 
of true and perfect benevolence and attachment ; our truly 
venerable, greatly blessed, and much valued lord. We have 
received your letters by the hand of our messenger returning 
from Carthage, and find in them such luminous traces of your 
character, that we seem rather to recognize than to acknow- 
ledge your benevolence towards us. It is. a benevolence flowing 
from Him, who, from the foundation of the world, predestined 
us to himself : in whom we were made before we were born ; 
for He who made the future before it was, made us, and not 



590 FROM THE TIME OF LLBANITJS 

we ourselves. Formed by his prescience, counsel, and opera- 
tion, we were united by an agreement and unity of will and 
faith, and by a secret love anticipating our personal know- 
ledge of each other. We congratulate ourselves, therefore, 
and glory in the Lord, who being one and the same in all 
regions of the earth, makes that love which He pours out 
upon all flesh, especially operative in his chosen by the 
agency of his Holy Spirit; gladdening his own city with the 
streams of his particular mercy; among the citizens of which 
He has made you the chief, having given you an apostolic 
seat among the princes of his people as your just reward : 
and us also, whom He has raised from among the degraded 
and destitute of the earth, He has deigned to number in the 
same lot w 7 ith yourself. But we more especially rejoice in 
that gift of the Lord, by which we have a place in your 
bosom : we rejoice that He has so wrought upon your affec- 
tions in our behalf, that we can repose with confidence in 
your love towards us. Nor is it possible not to return this 
affection with equal ardour when we think of the many kind- 
nesses and favours we have received from you. We have 
received, indeed, the most signal and most precious product 
of your affection for us, in those five books of our brother 
Augustin, that holy man, perfected in the faith of our Lord 
Christ ; of which such is our admiration, that we cannot but 
regard them as dictated by the spirit of God. Therefore, 
doubting not of your acquiescence, and assuring ourselves 
that you will recommend us to his candour, making the due 
apology for our inexperience, we have ventured at once to 
write to him ; and to the other holy men, with whom you hold 
converse, we trust you will recommend and excuse us in a simi- 
lar manner, that we may have the benefit and support of their 
prayers and good offices ; taking special care, as no doubt you 
will, to assure them, in return, of our devotion to the service, 
whether they be your officiating clergy, or the emulators, in 
the monasteries, of your faith and virtue. For although among 
the people, and over the people, you attend upon the sheep of 
the Lord's pasture, with an ever wakeful vigilance, yet by 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 591 

your abdication of the world, and your rejection of all its 
carnal allurements, you make, as it were, a desert around 
yourself, separated from the many, and called among the 
few. I have executed your commission in procuring the gene- 
ral history of Eusebius, the venerable bishop of Constanti- 
nople, with a little more delay than you calculated upon, not 
having a copy of that work in my hands. I found it at 
Rome, in the possession of that most holy man Domnio, who, 
without doubt, was the more active in carrying my wishes 
into effect, because it furnished him with an opportunity of 
testifying his respect for you. 

As you have now made us acquainted with the place of 
your residence, I have written, according to your desire, to 
the venerable partner of your labours, our respected Aurelius, 
to request, that if you should be still in the region of Hippo, 
he would obligingly send my letters to you there, together 
with a skin for transcribing the same in Carthage. And we 
have besought those holy men, with whose kindness and 
benevolence you have brought us acquainted, Comes and 
Enodius, to take charge of the said transcription, that our 
father Domnio may not be longer than is necessary kept 
without his own copy, while that which is sent to you may be 
retained by you for your own use. But this I specially request 
of you, — since you have honoured me with your favour and 
friendship so far beyond either my deserts or expectation, that 
in exchange for this general history now sent to you, you will 
furnish me with the entire history of yourself — your descent, 
your family, which you left at the call of the Lord, by what 
means, and in what manner your separation from her who 
bore you had its beginning ; and how you passed, having 
abjured the source from which your carnal existence was 
derived, to the mother that rejoices in her spiritual progeny, 
and into a royal and sacerdotal family. What you were 
pleased to say you learned from me at Milan, when you were 
initiated there, I confess myself anxious to hear more in 
detail, that I may be made acquainted with all that con- 
cerns you. I shall rejoice if from our father Ambrose you 



592 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

were invited to embrace the true faith, and consecrated to 
the priesthood, so that our conversion may have a common 
origin : for though I was baptized by Delphinus at Bour- 
deaux, and consecrated by Delphinus at Barcelona in Spain, 
yet was I nurtured in the faith by the love of Ambrose ; and 
to him I must ascribe my efficiency, whatever it is, in the 
sacred office to which I am ordained. He chose so to claim 
me, that wheresoever I might thereafter be settled, I might 
be considered as his presbyter. But that you may be fully 
acquainted with all that concerns me, know that though a 
sinner of long standing, I was not long ago extricated from 
darkness and the shadow of death • and that not long ago I 
began to breathe the vital air; that but lately I put my hand 
to the plough ; and but lately took up the cross ; which, that I 
may sustain until the end of my life, let me be aided by your 
prayers. To have come to my relief, when oppressed by these 
burthens, will accumulate the rewards which await you. The 
saint who succours the sinner shall be exalted as a city on a 
hill. And you are, indeed, a city built upon a mountain, or 
rather a light burning on a candlestick of seven branches, 
while my lamp is under a bushel, obscured by my sins. Visit 
us with your letters, and bring us forth into the light in 
which you live, conspicuous on your candlestick of gold. 
Your instructions shall be a light to our paths, and our heads 
shall be anointed with the oil of your lamp; and may our 
faith be quickened when we shall have drank in from the 
spirit of your mouth that which gives sustenance to the under- 
standing, and light to the soul. May the peace and grace of 
God be with you, and a crown of righteousness be reserved 
for you on that day, my much loved, much revered, and much 
wished for father and lord. We beg to salute, with all love 
and respect, those sanctified men who are about your person, 
and copy your virtue — your brothers, and ours, if they w 7 iil 
deign to be so called, whether in the churches or monasteries 
at Carthage, Thagast, Hippo regius, and in all places in your 
vicinity, or elsewhere, within the bounds of your visitations, 
serving the Lord faithfully. If you have received the parch- 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 593 

ment from the revered Domnio, you will kindly remit to us 
the transcript. I have sent you one loaf, as the symbol of 
unity, in which, however, the trinity is involved. This com- 
ment will be implied in your acceptance of this bread. 



Perhaps I have afforded the reader a sufficient glance into 
the character of Paulinus of Nola; enough to hold him forth, 
what, in truth, he was, one of the brightest patterns in the whole 
compass of ecclesiastical history. In addition to what has been 
produced of the writings of this amiable person, the following 
passage from another of his letters will give the reader a por- 
trait of him more expressive than that which he refused to his 
friend. Sulpicius Severus had desired to have Paulinus's 
picture. The Bishop of Nola refused, and called his request 
a piece of folly. The following passage of it was much admired 
by Augustin. (Ep. 86.) " How should I dare to give you 
my picture, who am altogether like the earthly man, and by 
my conduct represent the carnal person ? On every side 
shame oppresses me. I am ashamed to have my picture drawn 
as I am ; and I dare not consent to have it made otherwise. 
I hate what I am, and I would wish to be what I am not. 
But what avails it me, wretched man, to have evil and love 
good, since I am what I hate, and sloth hinders me from en- 
deavouring to do what I love? I find myself at war with 
myself, and am torn with an intestine conflict. The flesh 
fights against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. The 
law of the body opposes the law of the Spirit. Woe is me, 
because I have not taken away the taste of the poison-tree by 
that of the saving cross. The poison communicated to all 
men from our first parent by his sin, yet abideth in me." 

The letter from Augustin to Paulinus, written before they 
had met together personally, is a fair specimen of his fervid 
manner of expressing himself. His style is verbose and in- 
volved, and, while we peruse with admiration the elevation of 

Q Q 



594 FROM THE TIME OF LIBAN1US 

his matter and his manner, the taste of the period in which 
he lived forces itself upon our notice in every part of his 
writings. 

TO MY TRULY RESPECTED AND VENERABLE BROTHER PAU- 
LINUS, WORTHY OF ALL PRAISE IN CHRIST, AUGUSTIN 
SENDS HEALTH IN THE LORD. 

thou good man, and brother, long has the sight of you 
been denied to my soul, which hardly obeys me when I tell 
it to bear this privation patiently. Can it be said to bear it, 
while my bosom is tormented with an internal longing after 
your society. If it is only when we endure bodily suffering 
without perturbation of mind that we can properly be said to 
be patient ; so the mind must bear its own ills with the same 
composure, to be entitled to be considered patient. But 
because I cannot patiently bear to be without seeing you, I 
cannot allow that to be called impatience : for as long as you 
are what you are, one ought hardly to bear patiently to be 
without you. I may be well excused for being unable to 
endure that which, if I could endure with equanimity, I should 
myself be hardly worthy to be endured. 

However wonderful it may be thought, that which happens 
to me is not the less true — I grieve that I do not see you, and 

1 take comfort from that grief; so displeased am I with the 
fortitude which can bear patiently the absence of the good. 
Patience is sometimes the fruit of impatience. Thus we desire 
earnestly the future Jerusalem ; and the more impatiently we 
desire it, so much the more patiently we endure all things for 
its sake. Who can be insensible to the delight of your society, 
and who not sensibly feel the misfortune of being without it? 
Neither of these can I do; and since, if I could, I should be 
able to do violence to humanity, I am pleased to be without 
this power, and out of this self-satisfaction arises a certain 
consolation. It is not the grief of simple sorrow, but grief 
grounded on thought and reflection, which thus furnishes its 
own consolation. Do not, I pray you, reprove me, with that 
more holy gravity w 7 hich belongs to you, and tell me of the 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 595 

folly of lamenting the absence of one personally unknown 
to me, since you have in your correspondence unveiled to 
me the very recesses of your mind. For what if, at any 
time, I were told that a beloved brother and friend were 
dwelling in some city of this earth, should I not be reasonably 
distressed if I were not allowed to visit his abode ? Why 
then may I not as reasonably lament that I have not yet seen 
your person, — the abode of a mind with which I have become 
as well acquainted as with my own. For I have read your 
letters, flowing with milk and honey ; in which that simplicity 
of heart with which you seek the Lord, is the prominent cha- 
racter ; full of the odour of his goodness, and bringing lustre 
and honour to his name. The brethren here have read them, 
and express an untired and unspeakable delight in contem- 
plating those excellent gifts of God, with which you have been 
endowed. As many as have read them, seize upon them, and 
in their turn are seized with joy in the perusal of them. It is 
impossible to describe that sweet odour of Christ with which 
they are so fragrant. 

For is it not the natural effect of these letters, when they 
bring your character before us, to excite in us a desire to seek 
you ? The more perspicuous you are made, the more attractive 
you become. By making you mentally present to us, they render 
us less able to bear your personal absence. All learn from them 
to love you, and in proportion to this their love for you, is their 
desire to become the objects of your esteem and affection. Mean- 
while they praise and bless God, that by his grace you are what 
you are. Christ is earnestly supplicated to calm the winds and 
waves while you are on your way to the haven of assurance and 
stability. In these letters we see the spouse urged by the 
husband to an imitation of his firmness and pious fortitude ; 
and so united and coupled do you appear to be, by spiritual 
and chaste ties and bonds, and a reciprocation of duties, that 
in saluting you we seem to be saluting both. In these letters 
the cedars of Lebanon seem to be brought down from their 
heights, and made into the fabric of an ark, to float upon the 
waves of this stormy world. There the glory of this life is 



596 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

despised, that the true glory may be acquired. There a world 
is relinquished, that a world may be obtained. There the 
vices of secular pride and delusion are, as the children of 
Babylon, dashed against the rocks. 

These, and such like delightful contemplations, your letters 
present to those who have the advantage of reading them. 
Letters they are, full of faith unfeigned, precious hope, and pure 
charity. What a thirst and craving they create in us to go 
with your spirit into the courts of the Lord ! What can sur- 
pass that most holy love which they seem to breathe ? or that 
ebullition of cordial feelings with which they overflow ? What 
thanksgivings they pour forth to God ! What gifts they bring 
down in return from Him ! Shall we say that they are most 
distinguished by meekness, or by fervour? by light or abun- 
dance ? What is it in them that so melts us ? that so inflames 
us ? that, rains so upon us, and yet from so serene a sky ? 
What is it, I beseech you, that we can pay you as their worth, 
unless by being wholly yours in Him, whose only and wholly 
you are ? If this is not enough, I have no more to give. You 
have caused me to think this not a little to bestow, having 
condescended to honour me with so great praise in your letters, 
that when I bestow myself upon you, if I treat this present as 
a mean one, I must seem to doubt your veracity. Though 
ashamed of thinking so well of myself, I should be more 
ashamed to disbelieve you. I must, therefore, thus compro- 
mise the case. I will not believe that I am what you suppose, 
since of this I am not ascertained ; but I will confidently be- 
lieve I am loved by you, because this I plainly perceive and 
understand. Thus I shall be neither precipitate in my judg- 
ment of myself, nor ungrateful towards you. And when I 
offer myself entirely to you, it cannot be a small thing, because 
I offer that which is honoured by your attachment ;— I offer, 
if not what you think me to be, still that which you pray that 
I may be in desert. Your prayers for me are better than your 
praises of me — better to wish and pray that much may be 
added to what I am, rather than think me to be what I am not. 

Behold, in the man who brings you this letter, my dearest 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONTUS APOLLINARIS. 597 

friend — one with whom I have lived in the most cordial friend- 
ship from my earliest youth; whose acceptance with you will 
be ensured by the commendation of him who sends him to 
you. But I wish to caution you against giving credit to what 
he shall say in praise of me ; for I have found him to be a 
man too subject to be deceived by his propensity to measure 
others by his affection, rather than their true deserts; and 
especially, to deem me to have already received those gifts, to 
receive which at the Lord's hands I should, indeed, open wide 
the entrance to my inmost bosom. , And if he thus expresses 
himself concerning me when we are together, who does not 
see what praises he will be likely to pour upon me when ab- 
sent? — praises more flattering than true. 

He will transcribe for your use the books I have composed ; 
for I do not know that I have written anything for the ears 
either of those who are without, or those within the church, 
of which he is not possessed. But when you read them, my 
venerable friend, let not those things which the truth speaks 
through my infirmity so captivate you, that those which ori- 
ginate with myself may be accepted by you without diligent 
examination ; much less let the pleasure you find in dwelling 
upon the good and right things imparted to me, of which 
I am the mere dispenser, make you forget how much I need 
your prayers for the numerous errors I commit. In these per- 
formances, if you find, as you must needs do, what deserves 
your censure, there T myself am conspicuous ; but where, by 
that gift of discernment which you have received of God, you 
find anything with which you are rightly pleased, let Him 
have your gratitude and praise for it, who is the fountain of 
life, and in whose light we shall see light, when we shall see 
him face to face, and not as now in senigma. 57 What has been 
the product of my brain under the influence of the old fer- 
mentation, comes under a severe self-examination ; but what, 

57 B\e7rofi£v yap apTi di ((totttqov ev aiviyfjiari. 1 Cor. xiii. 12. We see 
as through a glass reflecting the images of divine things in an enigmatical 
manner. Invisible things being represented by visible, immaterial by corpo- 
real, eternal by temporal. 



598 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

by the gift of God, my mind has produced when nourished by 
the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, I rejoice in with 
trembling. For what have we which we have not received ? 
That his is the better lot who is rich in the greater and more 
numerous gifts of God, than his who possesses the fewer and 
smaller of the same gifts, who can deny? but again, his case 
is better who is full of gratitude to God for a small gift, than 
his who, having much to be thankful for, takes to himself the 
merit. Pray for me, my brother, that these may be always 
my simple confessions, and that my heart may not be at vari- 
ance with my tongue. Pray for me, I beseech you, that, 
reluctant to be praised myself, I may delight in praising and 
invoking God, and that I may be safe from my enemies. 

There is another reason for your loving the brother who 
brings you this. He is the kinsman of the venerable and 
truly blessed bishop Alipius, whom you embrace with all your 
heart, and deservedly ; for whosoever entertains proper thoughts 
of that excellent man, must think as he ought to do of the 
mercies and gifts of God. When, therefore, he read your 
petition, requesting him to write for you the particulars'^ his 
life, his kind feeling towards you prompted a compliance, 
while his modesty suggested a denial ; whom when I saw thus 
fluctuating between affection and humility, I transferred the 
burthen from his shoulders to my own; for in truth this is 
what in a letter he desired me to do. Speedily, therefore, if 
the Lord permit, I will bring all Alipius home to your bosom. 
What I am principally apprehensive of is, that he will be 
afraid to disclose everything which the Lord has conferred 
upon him, lest to the less intelligent (for it is not you only 
that will read these particulars) he may seem to hold forth 
himself to admiration, rather than the Divine gifts to man ; 
and thus you, who know how to read and construe these 
things, may, by this caution used by him in guarding against 
the infirmity of ordinary readers, be robbed of a part of your 
claim to a full acquaintance with the history of your brother. 
This task I should actually have accomplished and sent for 
your perusal, but that the brother who is my messenger upon 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 599 

this occasion, found it expedient to set out on his journey 
sooner than was expected. Him I now commend to your 
heart and your tongue, in the hope that you will admit him 
to a companionship with you, on the footing of an acquaint- 
ance not now commenced, but co-eval with our own friend- 
ship. If he shall without reserve place his mind clearly before 
you, I trust he will in great part, if not altogether, be restored 
to a sound state by your conversation. I could wish him to 
be almost stunned by the numerous voices of those who love 
their friends, not after the pattern of the world. His son, 
whom I regard as my own, and whose name you will find in 
some of my books, although he will not now have an oppor- 
tunity of presenting himself to you, I had resolved by letter 
to have delivered into your hands, to be by you consoled, 
exhorted, instructed, not so much by hearing you, as by bor- 
rowing strength from your example. From the verses he has 
composed, and from the epistle which I sent to him, your 
kind and feeling-discernment will have perceived what are my 
regrets, and fears, and wishes concerning him. Nor am I 
without hope that, through the grace of God, by your instru- 
mentality I shall be relieved of these agitating cares on this 
subject. 

Now, since you are about to peruse my many productions, 
your love will be rendered a source of greater pleasure to me, 
if what you shall find reprehensible in them you will, temper- 
ing your partiality with a due regard to justice, correct and 
confute. For certainly you are not one of those with whose 
oil I need fear my head to be anointed. 

The fraternity here, not only those who dwell with us, but 
who live in other places, serving God as we do, but especially 
all who know us and have fellowship with us in Christ, send 
their salutation and homage ; w T hile they desire earnestly to be 
admitted into brotherhood with you, and to witness the happi- 
ness you have in yourself and communicate to others. I dare 
not ask it, but if your ecclesiastical duties allow you any 
rest, come and see what are the sentiments which I feel 
towards you in common with Africa. 



600 FROM THE TIME OF LIBAN1US 

The character of St. Augustin is best gathered from his 
epistles, into which he pours the full flood of his feelings, and 
which bear most interesting testimony to his piety, sincerity, 
and humanity. They display also great richness of research, 
and reasoning powers of the highest class. Gibbon hastily 
pronounces him to be superficial, from his candid avowal in his 
confessions that he read the Platonists in a Latin version. He 
probably was not well enough acquainted with the Greek, to 
read, without trouble, the philosophy conveyed through that 
medium ; but the assumption of some critics, that he was so 
ignorant of the Greek language as to be disqualified for the 
task of expounding Scripture, has no warrant from his own 
confessions, or from the character and extent of his learned 
labours. It is very improbable that one who performed the 
office of a public teacher of rhetoric, with the highest success 
and celebrity, at Carthage, Rome, and Milan, should be igno- 
rant of any branch of human learning, though less distin- 
guished in some than others. That he neglected the study 
of Greek in his early youth, is his own confession (Confess, i. 
14), but his deep acquaintance with the Scriptures, implies 
such a direction of his studies, as must have repaired the defi- 
ciences of a period in which his temper, caprice, and desultory 
habits were under no salutary control. 

Gibbon gives the following summary of his character. 
" The military labours, and anxious reflexions of Count Boni- 
face, were alleviated by the edifying conversation of his friend 
St. Augustin, till that bishop, the light and pillar of the 
catholic church, was gently released, in the third month of 
the siege (of Hippo Regius 58 ), in the seventy-sixth year of his 
age (a. d. 436), from the impending calamities of his country. 
The youth of Augustin had been stained by the vices and 
errors, which he so ingenuously confesses : but from the 
moment of his conversion, to that of his death, the manners 
of the bishop of Hippo were pure and austere : and the most 
conspicuous of his virtues was an ardent zeal against heretics 

58 By Genseric. 



TO THE TIME OK SIDONIUS APOLLIXARIS. 601 

of every denomination, the Manicheans, the Donatists, and 
the Pelagians, against whom he waged a perpetual contro- 
versy. When his city, some months after his death, was 
burnt by the Vandals, the library was fortunately saved, which 
contained his voluminous writings. According to the judg- 
ment of the most impartial critics, the superficial learning of 
Augustin was confined to the Latin language, and his style, 
though sometimes animated by the eloquence of passion, is 
usually clouded by false and affected rhetoric. But he pos- 
sessed a strong, capacious, argumentative mind ; he boldly 
sounded the dark abyss of grace, predestination, free will, 
and original sin ; and the rigid system of Christianity which 
he framed and restored, has been entertained with public 
applause, and secret reluctance by the Latin church. " 

The historian to whom the above passage belongs, speaks 
of the superficial learning of St. Augustin ; but it will appear 
to such as are intelligent upon the aw r ful topics on which the 
pen of that great father was employed, that he touched 
nothing with which his mind had not become deeply con- 
versant. Gibbon was not only very superficial himself on 
these subjects, but so little acquainted with the learning of 
St. Augustin as to be but ill qualified to appreciate his merit. 
He avows his 'personal acquaintance' with the bishop of 
Hippo not to have extended beyond his Confessions, and the 
City of God ; and how far it extended beyond the porch of that 
sanctuary where the great man of whom he treats dedicated 
his heart-offerings to his Maker, and how far beyond the en- 
trance gate of the city peopled with his pious and magnificent 
thoughts, we are at liberty to conjecture. 

The two letters of St. Augustin to Valentin us, as they are 
not long, and are among his best in point of expression, while 
they explain his views on the conflicting propositions of sove- 
reign grace and free will, shall be produced. 



602 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 



TO VALENTINUS, MY MUCH LOVED AND HONOURED LORD, 
AND BROTHER IN CHRIST, AND TO THE BROTHERS WHO 
ARE WITH HIM, AUGUSTIN SENDS HEALTH IN THE LORD. 

We have been visited by two young men, Cresconius and Felix, 
announcing themselves as belonging to your congregation, who 
reported to us that your monastery was agitated with a disagree- 
ment of opinion which provoked much dissension : some enter- 
taining such exalted views of grace as wholly to deny to man 
the possession of free will ; and, what is of worse consequence, 
that, in the day of final judgment, God will not render to 
every one according to his works. They reported also, that 
many of you held another opinion ; maintaining that the will 
is assisted by the grace of God, and thereby disposed towards 
what is right in thought and act, and that when the Lord 
shall come to render to every one according to his works, He 
will pronounce those works only to be good, which God has 
fore-ordained that we should walk in them. And this I con- 
sider to be the right opinion. I beseech you, therefore, 
brethren, as the Apostle besought the Corinthians, by the 
name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same 
thing, and that there be no divisions among you. First, let 
it be observed, that our Lord Jesus Christ, as it is written in 
the Gospel of the Apostle John, did not come to judge the 
world, but that the world should be saved through Him. 
But afterwards, as writes the Apostle Paul, God shall judge 
the world when He shall come, as the church confesses in its 
Creed — to judge the quick and the dead. If, therefore, there 
is no grace of God, how does He save the world ? If there is 
no free will, how does He judge the world? Accordingly, 
the book or epistle which the persons abovementioned brought 
to you, I wish you to understand agreeably to this belief, 
— that you neither deny the grace of God, nor so maintain 
the doctrine of free will, as separating it from the grace of 
God, as though without it we were able to think or do any 
thing well pleasing to God ; for this is impossible. It is for 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 603 

this reason that our Lord, when he speaks of the fruit of 
righteousness, says to his disciples, " Without me ye can do 
nothing." On which subject I would have you to understand 
the letter above alluded to was written to Sixtus, a presbyter 
of the church at Rome ; and was intended against the new 
Pelagian heretics, who say that the grace of God is bestowed 
according to the amount of merit in the person receiving it ; 
which teaches, in effect, that he who glories, may glory, 
not in the Lord, but in himself; in direct opposition to what 
the Apostle enjoins — " Let none glory in man ; but let him 
who glories glory in the Lord." But these heretics, consider- 
ing themselves to be justified by themselves, and not regarding 
justification as the free gift of God, glory not in the Lord, but 
in themselves. To such the Apostle says, " Who made thee 
to differ V by which was implied that none but God himself, 
distinguished any from the common mass of ruin derived from 
Adam. But since a carnal man, and one vainly puffed up, to 
the question, " Who made thee to differ ?" might think or say, 
my faith, or my prayers, or my righteousness, hath made me to 
differ, the Apostle presently meets these imaginations, by say- 
ing, "What have you which you have not received ?" But if 
you have received, why do you boast as not having received ? 
Those do glory as not having received, who presume they are 
justified by themselves; and thus they glory in themselves^ 
not in the Lord. For this reason, in the epistle which I sent 
to you, I proved by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures, that 
neither good works, nor devout prayers, nor holy faith, could 
ever have been found in us, unless we had received them 
from Him, concerning whom the Apostle James says, " Every 
good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh 
down from the Father of lights." Nor let any one say, that 
for the merits of his own works, or for the merits of his prayers, 
or for the merits of his faith, the grace of God was given to 
him ; nor let that be believed which the heretics affirm, that 
the grace of God is given to us according to our deservings ; 
which is altogether a most false and unfounded opinion : not 
because there is nothing meritorious or good belonging to the 



604 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

pious, and no evil in the impious ; for if it were so, how will 
God judge the world? but merits of our own are not the 
ground of our salvation, which is the gift of God in Christ 
Jesus, and the pure result of his converting grace, of which 
good works are the fruit and the testimony. Of this grace 
and mercy the Psalmist thus speaks — " My God, let thy 
mercy go before me, that the unrighteous may be justified ;" 
that is, from being unrighteous be made righteous, and made 
to possess an inceptive sort of merit which the Lord will 
crown when he comes to judge the world. There are many 
things which I was desirous of discussing in a letter to you, 
by the perusal of which you might be brought more fully 
acquainted with what has been resolved in the councils of 
the bishops against those same heretical Pelagians, but the 
brothers who came to us from you were in haste to return, by 
whom we have written to you, though not in answer to any 
letters received from you : for none were brought by those 
who came from you ; nevertheless, we gave them welcome, as 
the simplicity of their carriage and behaviour satisfied us that 
they were practising no deceit. The reason alleged for their 
haste was their wish to pass the Easter w T ith you, hoping that 
so sacred a season, with the blessing of the Lord, might find 
you not in dissension but in peace. I think you will be acting 
wisely, and very much indeed to my satisfaction, if you will 
be persuaded to send to me, the person who, according to 
their statement, has been the promoter of this disturbance. 
For he either does not understand my book ; or, possibly, he 
himself may not be understood, when he endeavours to solve 
and disentangle a question difficult in itself, and intelligible 
to few : for it was this very question concerning the grace of 
God which occasioned men, wanting discernment, to under- 
stand the precept of the Apostle to be, " Let us do evil, that 
good may come." Whereof the Apostle Peter speaks thus, 
in his second Epistle, " Wherefore, my beloved, seeing that 
ye look for such things, be diligent, that ye may be found of 
him in peace, without spot, and blameless; and account that 
the long suffering of our Lord is salvation : even as our beloved 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 605 

brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, 
hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking 
in them of those things ; in which are some things hard to be 
understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, 
as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruc- 
tion. " . Listen cautiously, therefore, to the admonitions of 
the Apostle ; and where you find the subject too hard for you, 
put full confidence, in the mean time, until a fuller understand- 
ing of these subjects shall be vouchsafed to you, in the words 
of inspiration, from which you learn that the will of man is 
free, as is also the grace of God, without whose help the will 
can neither be turned towards God, nor advance in His favour. 
What you piously believe, pray that you may wisely compre- 
hend. The use of our understandings is the proper act of our 
free will. For unless the free will were engaged in the exercise 
of the understanding, the Scripture would not have spoken to 
us thus, " Understand ye brutish among the people, and ye 
fools, when will ye be wise V We see, therefore, that by 
Him who commands us to understand and be wise, our obedi- 
ence is required, which obedience could not be yielded without 
the exercise of the free will : and on the other hand, if this 
could be done without the help of Divine grace, so that we 
could understand and become wise purely by an act of the 
will, God would not have been thus addressed in the book of 
inspiration, " Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy 
law." Nor would it have been written in the Gospel, " Then 
opened he their understandings that they might understand 
the Scriptures." Nor would the Apostle James have said, 
" If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask it of God, that 
giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be 
given him. ,, Mighty is the Lord, who can grant both to you 
and to us, that we may rejoice in the speedy intelligence of 
the return of your peace and pious unanimity. I greet you 
not only in my own name, but in the name of the brothers 
who are with me, and I beg your united and fervent prayers 
for us. May the Lord be with you. 



606 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 



AUGUSTIN TO VALENTIN. 

To my beloved and honoured brother in Christ, Valentin, and 
the brothers who are with him, Augustin sends health in the 
Lord. 

You know that Cresconius Felix, and another of that name, 
who have come to us from your congregation, have passed the 
Easter with us ; whom we detained somewhat longer, that they 
might return to you better furnished for their conflict with 
those Pelagian heretics, into whose error he falls who thinks 
that the grace of God is given in recompence of any human 
merit, which is only bestowed upon man through and for the 
sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. But again, he who thinks that 
when the Lord shall come to judge the world, man shall not 
be judged according to his works, who through his life in this 
world was capable of using the free determination of his will, 
is nevertheless in error. For only those little ones, who are 
yet incapable of any works, either good or bad, shall be con- 
demned on the sole account of original sin, 5 9 to whom, by the 
washing of regeneration, the grace of the Saviour hath not 
brought redemption. But all others who have come to the 
use of their free will, and have added their own proper trans- 
gressions to the original sin, if they have not been rescued 
from the power of darkness, nor transferred to the kingdom of 
Christ, shall not only suffer for the guilt of the original offence, 
but for the transgressions of their ow 7 n voluntary commission. 
The good also shall not reap the reward of their own voluntary 
acts, but they have the happiness of knowing that they owe 
the direction of their wills to the grace of God ; and thus the 
Scripture is fulfilled which says, " Indignation and wrath, 
tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth 
evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile ; but glory, 
honour, and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew 
first and also to the Gentile." Concerning which very difficult 
question, that is, as to will and grace, I have no need in this 

59 See this austere tenet considered in a subsequent note 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 607 

epistle to enter into any discussion, since I had already given 
another to them as about soon to return. I have written also 
to you a treatise, which if, with the Lord helping you, you 
will read attentively, and with spiritual intelligence, there 
will not in future be any dissensions among you on this sub- 
ject. The persons abovementioned carry with them other 
instructions, which we have judged it important to furnish for 
your guidance, from which you will learn how the catholic 
church, by the mercy of God, has repelled the poison of the 
Pelagian heresy. For the letter written to Innocentius, the 
bishop of Rome, concerning the council of the province of 
Carthage, and the council of Numidia, and somewhat more 
accurately from five bishops, and the answer to these docu- 
ments, also the epistle to Zozimus concerning the African 
council, and his answer sent to all the bishops of all churches, 
and my own brief argument in the last general council of 
Africa in confutation of this error, and my book abovemen- 
tioned, which I wrote only for you, all these things I read over 
to them while they were with me, and by their hands I have 
now sent them to you. I have also read to them the book 
composed by the most blessed martyr Cyprian, on the prayer 
of our Lord, and have shewn them his precepts for the govern- 
ment of our lives, wherein he taught that all things are to be 
asked for from our heavenly Father, lest, presuming upon our 
own free will and power of choice, we fall from our dependence 
on divine grace. Where also we have clearly shewn in what 
manner the same most glorious martyr hath instructed us to 
pray for those who are yet unacquainted with the truth as it is in 
Christ Jesus, that they may become believers : which would be 
an unavailing precept, unless the church believed that the bad 
and faithless wills of men might be turned by the converting 
grace of God, to what is good and profitable. This book of 
Cyprian we have not sent, having been told that you were 
already possessors of it. My epistles to Sixtus, presbyter, 
which they brought with them to us, we have read with them, 
and have shewn them that it was written against those who 
say that the grace of God is imparted to us in respect of and 
in proportion to our merits ; that is, against these same Pela- 



608 FROM THE TIME OF LTBANIUS 

gians. To the best of our power, therefore, we have endea- 
voured to keep these men, and especially those who are united 
with you or with us in brotherhood, in the sound catholic 
faith ; which neither denies the exercise of free will in the 
adoption of a good or evil course ; nor yet ascribes so much 
efficacy to the free will, that without the grace of God it can 
prevail so as to effectuate a conversion from evil to good, or a 
progress in good, or such a fixed state of goodness as to be set 
above the fear of falling. And, my very dear and cherished 
friends, I exhort you in this letter, as the Apostle exhorts all 
men, " Not to think of themselves more highly than they 
ought to think, but to think soberly according as God hath 
dealt to every man the measure of faith." Attend to the 
admonition of the Holy Spirit uttered by Solomon, " Ponder 
the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established : turn 
not to the right hand, nor to the left: remove thy foot from 
evil." The ways to the right hand are known to the Lord, 
but those which are to the left are perverse. But He will 
make straight thy paths, and will prolong thy journey in 
peace. On these words of holy writ deliberate, my brethren ; 
for if there were no free will, it would not have been said, " Go 
straight on with your feet, neither turn to the right or to the 
left." And, nevertheless, if this could have been done without 
the grace of God, it would not afterwards have been said, 
" He will make straight thy way, and prolong thy journey in 
peace." Decline not, therefore, to the right hand, nor to the 
left : although the ways to the right are commended, and the 
ways to the left are reproved. And for this reason it is added, 
" turn thy foot from the evil way," i. e. from the left; which 
is shewn in what follows, " The ways which are to the right 
hand the Lord knoweth ; but perverse are those which are to 
the left." Now we ought to walk in the ways which the 
Lord knoweth, of which in the Psalm it is said, " The Lord 
knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly 
shall perish." This way the Lord knoweth not, because it is 
to the left ; as He will one day say unto those who are on the 
left, " I do not know you." But what is it which He does 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 609 

not know, who knows all things done by men, whether they 
be good or bad. What then is signified by the words " I 
know you not?" but this — such as you I have not formed; in 
the same sense as it said of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He 
knew no sin. 

And by this which is said, " the ways which are to the 
right hand the Lord knoweth," how is it to be understood but 
that He made the ways which are to the right — the paths of 
the upright, which are no other than those good works which 
God hath prepared, as says the Apostle, that we should walk 
in them. But the ways of the perverse, or wicked, He knoweth 
not, because He made them not for man, but man made them 
for himself. For which reason He saith, I hate the perverse 
ways of the wicked ; which are on the left hand. 

But then it may be said, in answer to us, why then hath 
He said turn neither to the right nor to the left, when it would 
seem more consonant for Him to have said, Maintain the right 
hand course, and decline not to the left. If the ways to the 
right are good, how can it be otherwise than good to decline 
to the right. Truly he must be understood to decline to the 
right who assigns to himself, and not to God, those good 
works which belong to the ways on the right hand. 

The precept must be thus understood, — He will make thy 
path straight, and prolong thy journey in peace. And know 
that when you are taking this right course, that it is the Lord 
God which enables you to do this. And although you walk 
in the right hand path you will not decline to the right; 
which you would do if you proceeded in a confident reliance 
on your own strength. He will be your strength who directs 
your going in the way, and prolongs your journey in peace. 
Wherefore, my beloved, whosoever says my owm will is suffi- 
cient to enable me to perform good works, declines, or stumbles 
in the right course. On the other hand, those who, when they 
are told of the grace of God, that it is able to change the wills 
of men from bad to good, reason thus — Let us do evil that 
good may come — decline to the left hand. It is on these 
accounts that we are admonished to decline neither to the 

R R 



610 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

right nor to the left. Set not up your free will, so as to ascribe 
to it your good works without the grace of God, nor so main- 
tain the power of grace, that in secure dependence upon it 
you do bad works, which election of evil may God put far 
from you. The false reasoning of such men the Apostle thus 
refutes, " What shall we say then ? shall we continue in sin, 
that grace may abound?" To this language of these erring 
men the Apostle answered as became him, " God forbid ! for 
if we are dead to sin, how shall we live therein?" Nothing 
shorter and better could have been said, for what more bene- 
ficial and advantageous to us could the grace of God bestow 
on this present evil world, than that we should die unto sin ? 
And ungrateful indeed would he prove himself to this grace 
who would turn that by which we die to sin into a justification 
for living in sin. May God, who is rich in mercy, vouchsafe 
to you the blessing of a sound mind, and of perseverance in 
every good purpose. This for yourselves, this for us, and this 
for all who love us, and for those who hate us, supplicate with 
earnest and vigilant prayer, in fraternal concord, that ye may 
live to God. If I deserve any thing from you, let brother 
Florus come to me. 



TO THE VENERABLE LORD, AND BELOVED HOLY BROTHER, 
AND CO-PRESBYTER HIEROM, AUGUSTIN SENDS HEALTH 
IN THE LORD. 

There has never occurred to me a better opportunity of trans- 
mitting a letter to you, than when I have been able to employ 
in that service a faithful minister and servant of God, and one 
especially dear to me on that account, and just such a person 
is our son Cyprian the deacon. Through such a medium of 
communication I have the best hope of your letters coming 
safely to hand, as he is certainly peculiarly qualified for this 
sort of agency : for this our said son has no lack of zeal in 
procuring answers, in setting forth one's title to them, in the 
careful custody of them, in the dispatchful conveyance of 
them, and in the faithful delivery of them. If I have in any 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 61 I 

manner deserved it, may the Lord so dispose your bosom, and 
shew favour to the wishes of my own, that no contrary incli- 
nation may oppose itself to the claims of the brotherly relation 
by which we stand engaged to each other. As I sent two 
letters to you and received no answer, I was desirous again to 
transmit the same letters to you, concluding that what I had 
sent had never reached you. But if my prior letters did reach 
you, and your answers were by some accident prevented from 
coming to my hands, send again what you have so sent already, 
if you happen to have them now in your possession ; and if not, 
I pray you dictate them afresh, that I may have the pleasure of 
perusing them ; while I shall, nevertheless, hope that you will 
not think it a trouble to answer what I am now writing. For 
my part, I have felt a strong inclination to send you those 
first letters, which, when I was as yet a presbyter, I prepared, 
to be conveyed by a brother of mine, Profuturus, who, after he 
became my colleague, departed this life, having never been 
able to execute his errand, on account of the duties of the 
episcopate, which took up all his time to the moment of his 
death, that you might see by them how ardent has always been 
my desire to unbosom myself to you, and how sincerely I 
regret that I am denied, by the distance at which we are placed 
from each other, all opportunities of a personal intercourse 
with you, by which my mind might come, as it were, into con- 
tact with yours, my brother, in whom I find so much to love 
and revere. 

I will take the opportunity of this letter to advert to what 
has lately come to my knowledge — that you have translated 
the book of Job from the Hebrew ; after having already given 
us your interpretation of the same prophet by turning into 
Latin the Greek of the Septuagint; in which version you have 
noted by an asterisk whatever is found in the Hebrew and is 
wanting in the Greek, and by an arrow what is found in the 
Greek and is wanting in the Hebrew, carrying these notations 
with wonderful accuracy, in some places, to single words. In 
this later version, which is made from the Hebrew, the same 
exactness as to the words in the Hebrew and not the Greek, or in 



612 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

the Greek and not in the Hebrew, is not found : and one does 
not see a clear reason why, in that first translation from the 
Greek into Latin, asterisks should be so carefully introduced, to 
denote the omission in the Greek of the smallest parts of speech 
occurring in the Hebrew ; while in this other translation from 
the Hebrew a much less degree of care is taken in this par- 
ticular. I should have been glad to have given you an example 
of what I mean, but I have had no Hebrew copy at hand ; 
though I am sure, such is the quickness of your perception, 
that no such help is necessary to make you understand either 
what I say or what I mean to say. I must own I should be 
better pleased to see you engaged in translating the Greek of 
the seventy interpreters of the canonical scriptures. It will 
be a lamentable consequence of your translation's coming into 
general use, if thereby the Greek and Latin churches shall be 
at variance in their creeds and doctrines. And this will be 
the greater evil, because an objector may be easily silenced by 
the production of the Greek version, that being a language of 
general notoriety ; whereas in a translation now made directly 
from the Hebrew, if one is surprised by any thing novel or 
unusual, or is induced to suspect any corrupt or erroneous 
rendering of the text, recourse is seldom or never had to the 
original for clearing up the difficulty. And if such appeal 
could without so much difficulty be made, would it not be 
vexatious, and tend to generate doubt and perplexity, to have 
the Greek and Latin authorities made subject to be so fre- 
quently impeached. And beyond all this, the Hebrews them- 
selves, if consulted, might vary from you in their interpretation 
of a passage or word, so as to bring your single authority into 
conflict with theirs, and you would not easily find a person 
qualified to decide between you. For example — one of our 
brother bishops, making use of your translation in the church 
over which he presides, brought forward a passage translated 
by you in the book of the prophet Jonas ; to which you 
assigned a sense differing very much from the common meaning 
of the words received and established for ages. Such stir and 
tumult took place among the people, but especially among the 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 613 

Greeks, complaining in such angry terms of a falsification of 
the text, that the bishop (for the place was a city) was com- 
pelled to ask the Jews for their testimony. But they, whether 
from ignorance or design, answered that the Hebrew in this 
instance did not differ from the Greek and Latin copies in 
their hands. What more need be said ? the man was con- 
strained by a regard to his personal safety, to correct what he 
had read out of your new translation, as a blunder. Whence 
we draw the inference that you may possibly be sometimes 
yourself in error. And see how difficult it is to secure cor- 
rectness in words, unless where they may be ascertained by 
comparison of languages familiarly understood. 

It is on this account that we ought to be full of thanks to 
God for having disposed and enabled you to translate the 
gospel from the Greek, since where a difficulty occurs, we may 
settle the question by an easy reference to the Greek original : 
and if any one shall from an habitual acquiescence in an inve- 
terate mistake, refuse to relinquish his prejudice, he may be 
easily corrected or confuted by consulting and collating the 
copies. But the cause, as it occurs to you, of the discrepancy 
between the Hebrew and the Greek translation, which we call 
the Septuagint, I much wish you would have the kindness to 
explain : for surely a work must be regarded as of no mean 
authority which has been thought worthy of so wide a diffu- 
sion, and the adoption of which by the Apostles is proved by 
their writings, — a fact I have heard confirmed by your own 
testimony. And therefore you could be an instrument of much 
good, if you were to exhibit in Latin with the fidelity which 
may be expected from you, the Greek Septuagint, of which 
the different copies are so variant from each other, as to make 
it to be feared, that when any thing in scripture is to be proved 
out of it, the copy when produced may exhibit something dif- 
ferent. 5 9 

59 The Bible was translated into Greek from the Hebrew by the Hellenistic 
Jews of Alexandria, who had been so long unfamiliar with the Hebrew, that 
some errors were to be expected from them. The story by Aristeas, about the 
translation by the Seventy, is treated by Bentley, see Phal. i. v. 84, and by 



614 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

I thought that this letter would have been but a short one, 
but I know not how, in writing on these matters, the pleasure 
I have experienced in its progress has been too like that of 
conversing with you, to allow itself to be soon relinquished. 
I beseech you, for the Lord's sake, not to be slow in answering 
this, touching all the matters contained therein. And to let 
me enjoy your presence as much as it is in your power to favour 
me with it. 



The imagination of St. Jerom was occasionally too vivid 



Prideaux Connex. v. ii. 259, as a fable and cheat; it obtained, however, the 
name of Septuagint, as written by seventy persons, each executing the whole 
separately, and all exactly agreeing. It was finished at Alexandria in the 
reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Such was the credit of this Greek version, 
that the Evangelists and Apostles all quoted from it, and the primitive fa- 
thers after them. All the Greek churches used it, and the Latins had no 
other copy of the Scriptures in their language till Jerom's time, but what was 
translated from it. All the versions of the Gothic, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Ar- 
minian, were made from it ; the Syriac alone having been translated from the 
original Hebrew, which is still extant, and used by all the Syrian churches in 
the East. There was, however, another Syrian version made from the Septua- 
gint. 

The Septuagint was completed in 372, b. c. In after times three other 
versions of the Scriptures in Greek were prepared; one by Aquila, a proselyte 
Jew of Sinope, in the reign of Hadrian, a. d. 128. Another by Theodotion, 
in the reign of Commodus ; and a third by Symmachus, in the reigns of Severus 
and Caracalla. That by Aquila, was written to favour the prejudices of the 
Jews ; the others, probably, in some measure, to serve the heretical sects to 
which they belonged. 

All these four different Greek versions, of which that of Theodotion is es- 
teemed the most correct, being between the literal and close translation of Aquila, 
and the free version of Symmachus, were collected into one volume by Origen, 
placing them in four different columns in the same page : which edition was 
called the tetrapla of Origen. The copies had been much corrupted, when 
Origen executed his edition. He cleared it from numerous mistakes, and re- 
duced it to a better order. Some time after this, he published another edition, 
to which were added two columns, in the one of which was placed the He- 
brew text in Hebrew characters, and in the other, the same Hebrew text in 
Greek characters : and this edition was called the Hexapla. His work was 
completed about the year 250, a.d. 

Origen had used various marks in his edition to shew what was redundant, 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 615 

and warm for the unembarrassed operation of his judgment; 
and his deviations might be the more likely to divert others 
from the sobriety of truth by the vigour and vivacity of his 
style. He entertained a notion that both St. Peter and St. 
Paul were equally opposed to the Judaizing spirit which was 
so prevalent among the Hebrew converts; and that the rebuke 
of St. Paul was only pretended on his part, 60 being the result 
of a previous arrangement and understanding between the two 
apostles, for impressing upon others the proper conduct to be 
observed by them, in reference to this subject. This opinion 
of Jerom was greatly disapproved of by Augustin ; and the 



and what was deficient, keeping the original text of the Septuagint entire ; as 
the obelisk or sword to shew additions, and the asterisk to indicate omissions, 
and these, by the carelessness of subsequent copyists, had been often omitted, 
and thus many passages were again taken into the text as original parts of it, 
which were redundancies, and marked as such. Other errors had in various 
ways crept into the copies. 

Jerom at first did no more than correct the Greek version of the Septuagint, 
and amend the common edition of the Hexapla of Origen, setting down the 
particulars in which the Septuagint differed from the Hebrew text. When he 
afterwards attained to a better acquaintance with the Hebrew, he put forth a 
new and entire Latin version of the original. His performance was received 
with much opposition. Augustin, as is seen above, had strong objections to it. 
Ruffinus and others, who were his declared adversaries, accused him of per- 
verting the Scriptures, and despising the authority of the Apostles, by rejecting 
the Septuagint translation. But Jerom stands abundantly vindicated by his 
own pen, and those of others, from all these charges. 

60 Jerom, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, explains him- 
self on this head; there he says that " St. Paul acted this part with St. 
Peter, that the hypocrisy or false shew of observing the law, which offended 
those among the Gentiles who believed, might be corrected by the hypocrisy 
or false shew of reprehension ; and that by this contrivance, both the one and 
the other might be safe, whilst the one who commended circumcision, followed 
St. Peter ; and the others, who refused circumcision, adopted the liberty of 
St. Paul." This certainly, both as to the particular opinion and general maxim, 
no honest Christian of the present day will be disposed, any more than Au- 
gustin, to assent to. This laxity concerning truth, which passed under the 
name of offlciosum mendacium, where it was conceived to be for the good of 
the church, was practised, even defended by many eminent Christian teachers 
of the fourth century. 

Chrysostom and others of the Greek fathers (for the maxim had footing 
chiefly in the Greek church,) maintained that a falsehood was to be justified 



616 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

controversy between them was maintained with so much cha- 
racteristic feeling on each side, that the letters passing be- 
tween them on this occasion deserve, in substance at least, to 
be produced as specimens of the characters and manners of 
the writers, and of the points about which they contended.' 

But before his letter is produced, a short account of Hierom 
or Jerom may be useful by way of introduction. He was born 
in Stridon, a city on the confines of Dalmatia, in the ancient 
Pannonia, as we learn from himself, in his catalogue of illus- 
trious writers. The time of his birth was either in 329 or 340. 
He appears to have descended from a good family, and to have 
had a competent estate. He completed his studies at Rome 
under the famous grammarian Donatus. Here he made remark- 
able progress in the Greek and Latin tongues, and pleaded at the 
public bar. Under the government of Valens, he prosecuted 
his travels for improvement into France and various provinces 
of the West. He returned to Rome, and resided there, till his 
desire to proceed in his studies and spiritual exercises without 
interruption determined him to retire into the solitudes of 
Syria. Heliodorus, who had accompanied him thither, together 
with three other companions, soon became tired of the solitary 
sojourn, and returned into his own country; but was followed 
by an epistle of Jerom to implore him to return, blotted, as he 
tells him he would find it, with his tears. This epistle is so cha- 

when it was to promote a good and sacred end. It was a pious fraud, and 
sanctified by its object. It was qualified also by the term oucovopia or dispen- 
satio ; and as such it is considered by Jerom in the following correspondence, 
and by Chrysostom in his first book on the priesthood. 

The great Basil, in his lesser monastic rules, repudiates this utilitarian doctrine, 
because Christ says that a lie is of the devil, John v. 44 ; and he allows no dis- 
tinction between lies ; rov %fpiot> diatyopav ipevdovg ovde/Aiav eK^r}davreg. The 
principle of dissimulation is very apt to multiply itself and to assume a variety 
of forms : there was claimed under it a licence of citing authorities without 
regard to correctness, as we find Jerom confessing himself to have done. In 
the lectures given to the Catechumens, the texts of Scripture are sometimes 
strained and tampered with, or disguised undersome mystical, allegorical, or sym- 
bolical interpretation, to suit a special purpose. This has even been imputed 
to Augustin by some of the popish writers, when they have been pressed on the 
part of the protestants with the authority of that Father. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 617 

racteristic of Jerom, that a few lines from it may interest the 
reader. " Remember that in your baptism you enlisted yourself 
a soldier of Jesus Christ, and therein took an oath of fidelity 
to relinquish father and mother, and whatever was dear to you 
for his service. Though, therefore, your little nephew should 
hang about your neck, though your mother should rend her 
garments, and lay open the bosom that bear you ; and though 
your father should lay himself down on the threshold to stop 
you, yet step over your father, and follow the standard of the 
cross with dry eyes ; it is great mercy to be cruel on such 
occasions. I know you will say the scripture commands us 
to obey our parents, and I grant it to be true ; but then con- 
sider that whosoever loves them more than Christ, loses his 
own soul." 

In the solitudes of Syria, Jerom passed several years in 
laborious study and pious exercises, advancing himself in the 
Hebrew tongue, and writing commentaries on scripture. The 
loss of his companions, and severe sickness, induced him to 
leave the desert and repair to Antioch, where he was ordained 
a Presbyter, by Paulinus, who was then contending for that 
See with Meletius, and Vitalis. This took place in 374, a. d. 
Some years after this, he took a journey to Constantinople, 
where he passed some time in the company of Gregory Nazian- 
zen ; from whom he acknowledges himself to have derived much 
instruction. From Constantinople he went to Rome, about 
the affairs of Antioch. At Rome he continued for the space 
of three years, being detained there by Damasus, the bishop, 
who derived much assistance, in the jurisdiction of his See, from 
his great learning and abilities. While he was at Rome, he 
was engaged in a controversy with Helvidius, who had written 
a treatise to prove that, after the birth of Christ, the Virgin 
Mary had children by her husband Joseph. His arguments, 
drawn from two or three ambiguous passages, too well known 
to need a reference here, were pertinently answered by Jerom. 
It was, indeed, a point of presumptuous speculation, not admit- 
ting of a conclusive determination, and altogether a very unfit 
subject of disputation. During this interval of his life, he 



618 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

formed a friendship with several eminent females of high 
birth and station, and among others with Paula, and Eusto- 
chium, to the latter of whom he addressed his discourse con- 
cerning the excellency of Virginity ; laying down a system 
of severe rules for the conduct of a holy single life. He dis- 
suades her from reading profane books, and tells her that, 
being once too eager in the perusal of Cicero, Plautus, and 
other ancient classics, he was seized with a violent fever, and 
fell into an agony, in which he was carried by the spirit to 
the tribunal of Christ, where, having been severely scourged, 
he was charged to indulge no more in such reading. This 
story he assured her was no dream ; though when Ruffinus 
afterwards upbraided him with his persevering, notwithstand- 
ing this chastisement and warning, in reading the classics, he 
ridiculed him for taking a dream to be a real truth. Jerom's 
conscience was certainly not over-severe on the question as to 
the permissibility of using fiction for promoting a pious end. 
At the expiration of three years from his coming to Home, 
Jerom travelled again to Antioch, thence to Jerusalem and 
Egypt, and finally to Bethlehem in Palestine; here he took 
up his residence in a little cell, whither the devout ladies, 
Paula, Eustochium, and Melania, soon came, and the number 
of solitaries increasing around them, the first of those ladies 
erected a church and four monasteries. 

Here he composed his treatise against Jovinian, in which 
he proceeded further in his defence of virginity, and offended 
many by his unwarrantable reflections on the state of matri- 
mony, in the holy character of which, he could hardly be said 
to have acquiesced, in accordance with the great apostle to 
the Gentiles. His letter to Nepotian, the nephew of Helio- 
dorus, on the office of the sacred ministry, and after his early 
decease, his consolatory epistle to the Uncle, are much cele- 
brated : they certainly do honour to his pen, his principles, 
and his feelings. In his letter to Demetrias, the grand- 
daughter of Proba, he argues again in defence and praise of 
virginity : but the chief merit of this letter consists in the 
clear and sound exposition it contains of divine grace, as the 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 619 

gift of free mercy. His commentaries of scripture are among 
the best which the fathers have bequeathed to us. He died 
in his monastery at Bethlehem, in the year 420. a. c. 



JEROM, IN ANSWER TO AUGUSTIN RESPECTING THE CHARGE 
OF "OFFICIUM MENDACIUM," AND CONCERNING THE 
TRANSLATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, AND THE PLANT 
MENTIONED IN JONAH. 

Domino vere sancto et beatissimo Papse Augustino, Hierony- 
mus in Christo salutem. 

Three epistles, or rather little books, I have received from 
you at the same time, by the hands of the deacon Cyprian, 
containing what you are pleased to call questions, but what 
to my understanding are rather to be viewed as censures of 
my humble performances ; and which it would require a 
volume to answer in full, if I were minded so to do. However, 
I will do my best to comprise what I have to say within the 
bounds of a letter somewhat extended, so as not to delay our 
brother, who undertakes to convey it to you, longer than can 
be avoided, since he is in haste to return, and has been urging 
me during the three days before his departure to be prepared 
with my letters; so as to throw on me the necessity of putting 
these sentences, such as they are, together, with a sort of 
tumultuous haste, rather dictating at a venture, than compo- 
sing with deliberation ; and trusting rather to what may acci- 
dentally occur, than to what such erudition as I may possess 
might furnish. I am in the condition of soldiers, who, how- 
ever brave, are disturbed by a sudden onset, and compelled 
to betake themselves to flight ere they can seize hold of their 
arms. But Christ is our armour, and our discipline that of 
the apostle Paul, who thus warns the Ephesians, « Wherefore 
take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able 
to withstand in the evil day." And again; " Stand, therefore, 
having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the 
breast-plate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the 
preparation of the gospel of peace : above all, taking the shield 



620 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery 
darts of the wicked : and take the helmet of salvation, and 
the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." Armed 
with these weapons, David proceeded to the combat ; taking 
with him from the brook five smooth stones, indicating the 
freedom of his thoughts from the disturbing things of this 
earth ; and, refreshed by a draught from the clear stream, after 
smiting the blasphemer in the forehead, he struck off his head 
with his own sword. Let us, therefore, say, " O God, my 
heart is ready, my heart is ready : I will sing, and give praise 
with my glory. Awake, psaltery and harp : I myself will 
awake early ;" that in us may be fulfilled the saying, " Open 
thy mouth wide, and I shall fill it." I have no doubt that you 
yourself pray that, in every contention between us, truth may 
prevail; for you seek not your own glory, but the glory of 
Christ: and when you conquer in the argument, I am also 
a conqueror by being conquered, if I am made thereby to per- 
ceive my own error. On the other hand, if I am victorious, 
a similar result will make you a partner in my victory. 

You ask why I say, in my commentary on the Epistle to 
the Galatians, that Paul could not possibly have meant seri- 
ously to reproach Peter for the very thing which he himself 
had done ; or accuse him of that simulation of which he him- 
self was equally guilty. And you assert, in opposition to my 
opinion, that the Apostle's rebuke was genuine, and not a 
mere feint for promoting their common object, — the dispen- 
sation of the truth of the Gospel; and that I ought not to 
teach that the Scriptures ever authorize a falsehood : to which 
I answer, that it became your discretion and candour to read 
the humble preface to my Commentaries, which speaks my 
sentiments on this subject. If anything appeared to you, in 
the exposition I have attempted to give of this matter, to be 
censurable, it would have been in better accordance with your 
erudition to inquire, whether what I have written was to be 
found in the Greek commentators ; that if none of them should 
be found maintaining the same Opinion with myself, it might 
be justly condemned as one for which I stand solely responsible. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 621 

It was the more incumbent upon you to make this inquiry, as 
I have frankly confessed in my said preface that I have taken 
for my guide in this matter the commentaries of Origen, and 
that sometimes I have expressed my own, and sometimes 
another's sentiments; and at the end of the chapter in which 
you find so much to blame, I have written to this effect: 61 — 
" If this explication of the passage in question should be 
thought objectionable by any one, in which it is shewn, that 
neither did Peter err, nor Paul petulantly arraign his superior 
in age, it behoves him to explain on what ground Paul would 
feel himself warranted in censuring in another the very thing 
which he himself had done." From which passage in my 
preface, it appears that I was not directly and expressly main- 
taining what I had found in the Greek commentators, but was 
merely setting forth what I had so read in their writings, that 
the reader might judge for himself whether this mode of ex- 
pounding the translation in question deserved to be adopted 
or rejected by him. Your argument is rather a novel one. 
You maintain that the Gentiles who believed in Christ were 
exempt from the burthen of the law, while the believing Jews 
were subject to the law ; and that, in the persons of the two 
Apostles, the whole doctrine was maintained — Paul, as a 
teacher of the Gentiles, reproved those who kept the law ; 

61 This was surely very strange reasoning, and a confession throwing great 
ambiguity over all the statements and declarations oi* Jerom . Thus to retreat 
upon others when pressed by strong objections to any of his positions and 
expositions, was too much the habit of this very erudite father. If we are 
never to be sure whether Jerom is delivering his own judgment or the judgment 
of others, till the Greek commentators are looked through, the authority of 
Jerom must, indeed, lose much of its personal weight, and be much impaired 
in its power of producing conviction in the minds of his readers. The license 
which Jerom asserts to belong to disputation, of adopting almost any argument 
for the sake of carrying a point, is too familiar with him ; and to be convinced of 
this, we have only to read his letter to Pammachius, wherein he maintains that 
there are divers sorts of discourse, and that it is one thing to write yvfiva^iKdjg, 
and another to write SoyfiariKiog. In this opinion he fortifies himself by 
the example of Demosthenes and Cicero among the orators, and Plato, Theo- 
phrastus, Xenophon, and Aristotle among the philosophers ; and one feels 
shame in finding that he borrows countenance from Origen, Methodius, Eu- 
sebius, and Apollinaris. See Hier. Ep. 50, ad Pammach. 



622 FROM THE TIME OF LTBANIUS 

and Peter is rightly reprehended for having, as the chief of 
the Circumcision, imposed that upon the Gentiles which it 
became only the Jewish converts to observe. Now, if you 
really are of opinion that the believing Jews were debtors to 
perform the ceremonial law, surely you ought, as being a 
bishop so famous through the whole world, to publish it uni- 
versally, and to bring all your brother bishops to the same 
opinion. I dare not, in my little cell, with my fellow monks, 
that is, with my fellow sinners, pronounce a judgment on these 
great matters ; but must be contented ingenuously to confess, 
that I consult the writings of those who have gone before me ; 
and venture to propose some explanations in my Commen- 
taries, agreeably to general usage, that, out of the many, every 
one may adopt what pleases him most: a method which, I 
think, you must have met with and approved of, both in se- 
cular and sacred literature. 

This explanation of the passage in question, Origen, in 
the tenth book of his Stromata, where he comments upon the 
Epistle of Paul to the Galatians, and the expositors who fol- 
lowed him, adopted, as affording an answer to the blas- 
phemy of Porphyry, who charged Paul with petulance, as 
daring to reprimand Peter, the prince of the Apostles, and 
reprove him to his face for having committed the same fault 
of which he himself had been guilty- What shall I say of 
John (Chrysostom), lately the bishop of the church of Con- 
stantinople, who wrote very fully upon this chapter, in which 
he conformed to the opinion of Origen and the ancients ? If, 
therefore, you reprehend me as being in error on this subject, 
suffer me, I beseech you, to err with men like these; and, as 
you see how many associates I have in my error, you ought 
surely to bring forward one authority to confirm the opinion 
you hold on this point. So much for my exposition of one of 
the chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians. But that I may 
not seem to rely on the number of my witnesses in opposing 
your reasoning on the subject, and to cover by illustrious 
names my evasion of the truth, from a fear of coming boldly 
to the conflict, I will bring forward some examples from Scrip- 
ture itself. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 623 

In the Acts of the Apostles, we read, that a voice came to 
Peter, saying, " Arise, Peter, kill and eat;" that is, all animals, 
whether quadrupeds, or those that creep upon the earth, or 
those that fly in the air. By which command it is shewn that 
no man is by nature rejected, but all are equally invited to be 
partakers of the Gospel of Christ. Peter answered, " Not so, 
Lord ; for I have never eaten anything that is common or 
unclean." And the voice from heaven spake unto him again 
the second time, " What God hath cleansed, that call not 
thou unclean." Peter then proceeded to Caesarea, and, having 
conversed with Cornelius, opened his mouth and said, " Of a 
truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons ; but in 
every nation, he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, 
is accepted with Him." Then the Holy Ghost fell on them ; 
and they of the circumcision, who believed, were astonished, 
as many as came with Peter, because on the Gentiles also 
was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. Then answered 
Peter, " Can any man forbid that these should be baptized, 
who have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?" And he 
commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. 
And the Apostles and brethren that were in Judea heard that 
the Gentiles had also received the word of God. But when 
Peter was come up to Jerusalem, they that were of the cir- 
cumcision contended with him saying, " Wherefore hast thou 
entered in to men uncircumcised, and hast eaten with them?" 
To whom, having explained the whole matter, he ended by 
saying, " If, then, God gave unto them the like grace which 
he did unto us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, what 
was I that I could withstand God ?" When they heard these 
things, they held their peace; and glorified God, saying, 
" Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance 
unto life." 

Again, when a good while after this, Paul and Barnabas 
had come to Antioch, and to the assembled church had related 
what great things God had done with them, and how he had 
opened the door of faith to the Gentiles ; certain men who 
came down from Judea taught the brethren, and said, " except 



624 FROM THE TIME OF LIBA1SIUS, 

ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be 
saved. When, therefore, Paul and Barnabas had no small 
dissension and disputation with them, they resolved, both the 
persons accused and their accusers, to go up to Jerusalem, to 
the Apostles and Elders, about this question. And when 
they were come to Jerusalem, there arose up certain of the 
sect of the Pharisees which believed in Christ, saying, " that 
it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to 
keep the law of Moses. And when there was much disputing, 
Peter, with his accustomed liberty, said unto them, " Men 
and brethren, ye know that a good while ago, God made 
choice among us that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear 
the word of the Gospel, and believe. And God, who knoweth 
the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, 
even as he did unto us : and put no difference between us and 
them, purifying their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why 
tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, 
which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear. But we 
believe, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall 
be saved even as they." Then all the multitude kept silence. 
And James and all the Elders embraced his opinion. These 
things ought not to be tedious to the reader, but profitable 
both to him and myself, as they shew that, before Paul, Peter 
was not only not ignorant that, after the Gospel dispensation, 
the law was no longer to be observed, but that he was the 
chief promoter of the decree to that effect. In fine, so great 
was the authority of St. Peter, that Paul thus expressed him- 
self in his epistles, " Then after three years I went up to 
Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days." 
And again, he says, " Fourteen years after I went up again to 
Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus with me. And I went 
up by revelation, and communicated to them the Gospel which 
I preach among the Gentiles." From all which it appears that 
he felt insecure of his own correct exhibition of the Gospel, 
without the concurrence of Peter, and those who were with 
him. And then he adds, " but privately to them which were 
of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINAIUS. 625 

vain." Now why did he do this privately, and not in public? 
— lest those of the Jews who had been converted to the faith, 
and who thought that the law should be observed, together 
with their belief in Christ, should be offended. On this account, 
when Peter came to Antioch, we are told by Paul, though no 
mention is made of it in the Acts of the Apostles, that he with- 
stood Peter to the face, because he was to be blamed. For 
before that certain persons came from James he did eat with 
the Gentiles, but when they were come he withdrew and 
separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision : 
and the other Jews dissembled likewise with him ; in so much 
that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. 
But when I saw that they walked not uprightly, according to 
the truth of the Gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, " If 
thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not 
as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as 
do the Jews." No one can doubt that the Apostle Peter was 
the author and founder of the opinion which he now dissem- 
bled ; and that the cause of his so dissembling was his fear of 
the Jews. As we have shewn, therefore, that Peter held a 
right opinion concerning the abolition of the law of Moses, but 
that he was constrained by his fears to put on the appearance 
of observing it, let us now see whether Paul, who so reproved 
him, did not act in the same manner from the like motive. 

[Jerom then instances the circumcision by St. Paul, in his 
visit to Derbe and Lystra, of Timothy, who was the son of a 
believing Jewess and a Gentile father, which was done on 
account of the Jews who were in those parts : also the Apostle's 
shaving of his head at Cenchrea, 62 having accomplished his 

62 It may here be worthy of remark, that many commentators refer this vow 
to Aquila, whose name comes immediately before the mention of the incident. 
And if we refer it to Paul, it may still not denote any compliance with the 
Jewish ceremonies, since many of the learned, as Alberti and others, consider 
it as a mere civil vow, and not a vow of Nazariteship ; but made probably, as 
was frequently done both by Jews and Gentiles, on account of some under- 
taking, or some deliverance from sickness, or other peril. Valcknaer refers 
Ksipafitvog, &c. to Aquila. 

s s 



626 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

vow : and above all, the particulars related in the twenty-first 
chapter of Acts, wherein we are told that the Elders who 
were with him, and approved of his Gospel, said to him as 
follows, " You see, brother, how many thousands there are in 
Judea who believe in Christ, and these all are zealous of the 
law. And they are informed concerning thee that thou teachest 
all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, 
saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, nor to 
walk after the custom, What is it therefore ? The multitude 
must needs come together ; for they will hear that thou art 
come. Do therefore this that we say unto thee ; we have four 
men which have a vow on them ; take them, and purify thy- 
self with them ; and be at charges with them, that they may 
shave their heads : and all may know that those things 
whereof they were informed concerning thee, are nothing ; but 
that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law." 
Then Paul took the men, and the next day purifying himself 
with them, entered into the temple, to signify the accomplish- 
ment of the days of purification, until that an offering should 
be offered for every one of them. 

From all which things on the part of St. Paul, done by him 
manifestly to avoid giving offence to the Jews, Jerom argues 
that St. Paul could not have seriously meant to cast reproach 
upon St. Peter for adopting the same appearance of acqui- 
escence in the Jewish ceremonial law, as he had himself found 
it expedient to assume when placed amidst Jewish converts to 
the faith, either at Jerusalem or on his travels; while both 
were equally convinced that the time was come for laying that 
law and economy aside, as superseded by the Gospel: and 
that the reprehension of Peter by Paul at Antioch was con- 
certed between them, for the promotion of the great cause 
which was equally the object of both of them.] 

Jerom thus proceeds with his subject. The explanation 
which has occurred to me, and to others before me, of this 
whole matter ought not to make us seem to be persons defend- 
ing a pious fraud, as you consider us, but as justifying a 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINAIUS. 627 

measure designed to promote the gospel dispensation. You 
thus express yourself in your letter to me. u Neither need 
you be taught by me how the Apostle is to be understood 
when he says, ' to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might 
gain the Jews ;' and those other declarations of his to the 
same effect, which imply that the appearances so put on by 
him were not designed to impose a fallacy upon the Jews, but 
done out of commiserating tenderness for their prejudices. 
Just as one who is zealous in his services to the sick, puts 
himself, as it were, in the place of the sick ; not falsely feign- 
ing to be sick, but, with a soothing and sympathizing mind, 
waits upon the patient as he himself, were he the sufferer, 
would wish to be waited upon. Being originally a Jew, 
though made a Christian, he had not abandoned the sacra- 
ments of the Jews, for which there was once a befitting time, 
and therefore allowed their continuance when he had become 
an Apostle of Christ, not considering them as being evil in 
their consequences to those who were willing to preserve, after 
their conversion to Christianity, what through the law they 
had received from their parents ; not as placing in them their 
hopes of salvation, which was only to be looked for through 
Jesus Christ, and of which these sacraments were only the 
signs." I take the sense and meaning of your extended dis- 
cussion to be this — that Peter did not err, simply in paying 
regard to the Jewish ceremonies, or in thinking that those 
ceremonies might be kept on foot, but in requiring from the 
Gentiles the same observances ; not, indeed, by peremptory 
and express command, but by implication from his conversa- 
tion and example. And Paul did not hold a language opposed 
to his own practice in this respect, but reproved Peter because 
he was for compelling the Gentiles to Judaize. This I con- 
ceive to be the true state of the question, and of the opinion 
you have expressed upon this subject, viz. that the believing 
Jews did well, after they had embraced the Gospel, in keeping 
up the observances of their law, in respect of their sabbaths, 
in circumcising their children, as Paul had done in the case of 
Timothy, and in their sacrifices, which Paul himself had 



628 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

offered. If this be the real state of the case, then are we 
fallen into the heresy of Cerinthus and Ebion ; who, though 
believers in Christ, were anathematized by the Fathers, be- 
cause they blended the ceremonies of the law with the Gospel 
of Christ; and while they held the doctrines of the new dis- 
pensation, did not wholly cast off the old. What shall I say 
of the Ebionites, who gave themselves out for Christians ? To 
this very day, throughout all the oriental synagogues, there is a 
heresy among the Jews, which is called the heresy of the 
Mineites, and is still denounced by the Pharisees. These are 
vulgarly named Nazarenes, who believe that Christ, the Son 
of God, was born of the Virgin Mary ; and say that it was he 
who suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rose again ; in whom 
also we believe. Willing to be at the same time both Jews 
and Christians, they are, in the true sense of the terms, 
neither Jews nor Christians. I must, therefore, entreat you, 
that whilst you are exerting yourself to cure the little wound 
supposed to have been given by me, made as it were by 
the puncture of a needle, you would bethink yourself of the 
heavy wound which the opinion pronounced by you on this 
passage of Scripture has inflicted with the stroke of a pon- 
derous spear : for surely, to set forth the various opinions 
of those who have lived before us on any part of the sacred 
writings, and to introduce a baneful heresy into the church, 
stand in very different degrees of culpability. But if there is 
a necessity upon us to receive the Jews with the rites and 
ceremonies of their law, and it is to be allowed to them to 
practise in the church of Christ the exercises of the synagogue, 
I must plainly tell you what I think will be the consequence ; 
they will not become Christians, but they will make us Jews. 
For what Christian can read unmoved what is contained in 
your epistle — Paul was a Jew, but becoming a Christian, he 
did not deem it necessary to lay aside the sacraments of the 
Jews, which were once in seasonable, proper, and legitimate 
use among that people ; and, therefore, though an Apostle of 
Christ, he did not scruple to celebrate them, that they might 
infer from his example that the observance of what they had 
derived from their ancestors would not be injurious to them. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 629 

Again, I beseech you to hear me with patience. Paul 
observed the ceremonies of the Jews when he was an Apostle 
of Christ ; and you say that they were not hurtful to the Jews, 
who were desirous of keeping them, as they had received them 
from their fathers. I, on the contrary, affirm, and will publicly 
and in the face of the whole world affirm, that the ceremonies 
of the Jews are fraught with death and destruction to Chris- 
tians. And whosoever shall observe them, whether he be Jew 
or Gentile, is falling fast into the abyss of Satan : for li Christ 
is the end of the law, and righteousness to every one that 
believeth," whether he be Jew or Gentile. But it will not be 
the end unto righteousness to every one that believeth, if the 
Jew is excepted. In the Gospel we read, " The law and the 
prophets were until John." And again, " Therefore the Jews 
sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken 
the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making 
himself equal with God. Of his fulness we all have received, 
and grace for grace, for the law was given by Moses, but grace 
and truth came by Jesus Christ. Instead of the grace of the 
law, which has passed away, we have received the permanent 
grace of the Gospel, and in the place of the shadows and 
images of the Old Testament the truth has come by Jesus 
Christ. Thus does Jeremiah prophecy from the inspiration 
of God — " Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will 
make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the 
house of Judah, not according to the covenant which I made 
with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand, 
to bring them out of the land of Egypt." Observe, it is not to 
the Gentile people, w T ho had not before received the covenant, 
that he promises the new covenant, but to the nation of the 
Jews, to whom He had given the law by Moses, that he pro- 
mises the new covenant of the Gospel, that they might no 
longer live in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of 
the Spirit. 

Paul, in whose name this question is agitated, has frequent 
passages in his writings of the same tenour, from which, for 
brevity sake, I will weave some together. Behold, I Paul say 



630 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

unto you, that if ye be circumcised Christ shall profit you 
nothing :" and again, " Christ is become of no effect unto 
you, whosoever of you are justified by the law ; ye are fallen 
from grace :" and, " If ye are led by the Spirit, now are ye 
not under the law." From which it is manifest that he who 
is under the law, in the sense in which you understand it, not 
as our ancestors regarded it, as belonging to the dispensation 
under which they lived, has not the Holy Spirit. Now what 
the precepts of the law are, let us learn from God's teaching, 
" I gave them also statutes which were not good, and judg- 
ments whereby they should not live." These things we say, 
not that we may destroy the law, which we know is holy and 
spiritual, according to the Apostle, but because after faith 
succeeded, and the fulness of the times, God sent his own 
Son, born of a woman, made under the law, that He might 
redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive 
the adoption of children, and might no longer be under a 
schoolmaster. You proceed in your epistle as follows — " He 
did not reprove Peter because he had observed the usages of 
his fathers, which, if he were willing to do, he would have 
acted neither falsely nor inconsistently." To which I say 
again, you are a bishop, a ruler of the churches of Christ: 
prove the truth of your assertion : shew me, if you can, a Jew 
who, having become a Christian, circumcises his child ; who 
observes his ancient Sabbath ; who abstains from the food 
which God has created to be used with thanksgiving ; who, 
on the fourteenth day of the first month, slays a lamb for an 
evening sacrifice. When you shall have found that you cannot 
do this, you will be constrained to renounce your opinion, 
which you will perceive how much more difficult it is to 
establish, than to censure the opinions of others. But lest we 
should mistrust, or not understand, what you say (for a 
discourse drawn out to great length is apt to be not under- 
stood, and by its obscurity goes without its due reprehension 
from the unskilful), you repeat, and inculcate, that Paul 
repudiated whatever practice of the Jews had evil in it. But 
what is the evil repudiated by Paul? It is thus that you 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 631 

describe it — " being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and 
seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not 
submit themselves to the righteousness of God." 

In the next place, that after the passion and resurrection of 
Christ, and after the sacrament of grace had been proffered 
and manifested, according to the order of Melchisedech, they 
still persisted in thinking the old sacraments were to be cele- 
brated, not out of regard to their accustomed solemnity, but 
from a persuasion that they were necessary to our salvation. 
Which, nevertheless, if they were never necessary, the martyr- 
dom of the Maccabeans was undergone vainly and gratuitously. 
And lastly, that they persecuted the Christian preachers of 
grace, as enemies of the Jewish law." These, and other simi- 
lar errors and corrupt opinions and practices, Paul, you say, 
declares himself to condemn. And it is thus we have learned 
from you what were the evils of the Jewish system which Paul 
abandoned. And, on the other hand, you inform us what are 
the good things of that dispensation proper to be retained. 
You will say, they were only such observances as Paul himself 
practised, without imputing to them any necessity as respects 
our salvation. What you mean by this necessity as respects 
our salvation, I confess I do not well understand. For if they 
do not conduce to salvation, why are they observed ? If they 
ought to be observed, they must be necessarily connected with 
our salvation. Many of our actions may be neither essentially 
bad or good : as concerning neither righteousness or unrighte- 
ousness, we may walk between them indifferent as to either; 
but the observance of the ceremonies of the law cannot be 
matter of indifference. You pronounce them to be good, I 
say they are bad ; and bad not only as respects the Gentiles, 
but as respects those of the Jewish nation who believe. On 
this topic, while you would avoid one consequence, you lapse 
into another : for while you are in dread of the blasphemy of 
Porphyry, you fall into the snare of Ebion, in apologizing for 
the observance of the law by the Jewish believers. 63 And 

65 Porphyry had said that the contention between Peter and Paul was mere 
puerile play ; to which blasphemy Augustin thought the light in which Jerom 



632 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

because you are aware of the dangerous ground on which you 
stand, you endeavour by the addition of some nugatory ex- 
pressions to temper your propositions. Thus you would be 
understood to say that Paul observed the ceremonies of the 
law without considering them as in any measure necessary to 
salvation ; or without any of that deceitful simulation which 
he reprehended in Peter. You consider that Peter affected 
only to maintain the legal ceremonies, while Paul openly and 
boldly observed them. And then you proceed to say — For if 
he only celebrated those sacraments because he would appear 
to be a Jew, that he might thereby gain the Jews, why did he 
not also sacrifice with the Gentiles ? 64 becoming as without the 
law to those who were without the law, that he might gain 
the Gentiles : unless that being born a Jew, what he did as a 
Jew was done, not that he might put on the appearance of 
being what he was not, but that he perceived he would be 
performing a charitable and feeling part towards his country- 
men, by acting as if he was of their persuasion as to keeping 
up the ceremonies of the law ; his object being rather to 
sympathize with them than to deceive them. Thus you set 
up a notable defence for Paul, by shewing him not to have 
simulated the error of the Jews, but to have really been a 
partaker of their error. He was not, it seems, willing to 
follow Peter in dissembling for fear of the Jews, but frankly, 
and without any such fear, declared himself a Jew. Thus has 
the Apostle presented us with a rare example of compassion ; 
— in order to make the Jews Christians, he has himself be- 
come a Jew. As if the only effectual way of recalling the 
luxurious to a life of temperance would be to prove oneself as 
luxurious as they; or of consoling the wretched, to make 
oneself alike miserable. I cannot but think those to be in 
bad case who, from a love of contention, and of an abolished 
law, have represented as a Jew an Apostle of Christ. We 

had considered the case lent a dangerous colour. It will be seen in a subse- 
quent letter, from Augustin to Jerom, how strongly he rejects the notion of what 
he calls a mehdacium officiosum. 

01 This argument of Jerom seems to be worse than weak. 



TO THE TIME OF S1DONIUS APOLLINx\RIS. 633 

differ more in the motives than in the effect ascribed by us to 
the conduct of the Apostles ; for whether they acted from fear 
or commiseration, they put on the appearance, in either case, 
of being what they really were not. You say that my mode 
of accounting for the conduct of the Apostles, by imputing it 
to simulation, rests upon reasoning which requires also that 
there should have been the same imitation of the Gentiles, 
but what you thus urge upon me makes rather for me than 
against me. For as Paul was not really a Jew, so neither was 
he really a Gentile ; but he conformed to the Gentiles in 
rejecting circumcision, in permitting things to be eaten which 
the Jews forbid to be eaten, while the worship of their idols 
he condemned. In Christ Jesus neither circumcision is any 
thing nor uncircumcision, but obedience to the command- 
ments of God . 

I beseech you, therefore, and again and again entreat you 
to pardon this my little argumentative essay, and if I have 
affected something above my measure, you must impute it to 
yourself, who have compelled me to write. Do not think me 
to be the patron of a lie, who am, indeed, a follower of Him 
who is the way, the truth, and the life. It can never be that 
I, who have so long been a worshipper of truth, could suddenly 
so change my character, and enter into the service of false- 
hood. Do not stir up against me a multitude of the mean 
and ignorant, who reverence you as their bishop, and hear 
your declamations in the church with the homage which 
belongs to sacerdotal dignity, while of me they make little 
account, as one in the decrepitude of second childhood, and 
almost buried in the obscurity of rural and monastic seclusion ; 
but rather seek one on whom you may more fitly bestow your 
lessons and corrections. Separated as we are from you by so 
wide an interval of sea and land, the sound of your voice is 
scarcely heard by us ; and if perchance you write letters, they 
are spread over Rome and Italy before they find their way to 
me, to whom they are sent. In the question you put to me 
in some of your other letters — why my former interpretation 
of the canonical books have asterisks and marks of reference, 



634 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

and this subsequent translation are without such signs; with 
your leave I must say, you appear to me not to understand 
what you inquire about. That was an interpretation of the 
seventy interpreters, and wherever rods or arrows occur, they 
are designed to indicate that the seventy have said more than 
that which is said in the Hebrew ; but when the sign used is 
an asterisk or star, that something is added from the edition 
of Theodotion by Origen. There we translated the Greek ; 
here we have set forth our understanding of the Hebrew itself, 
having regard rather to the true meaning than the literal 
expression. And I cannot but wonder that you should read 
the books of the seventy interpreters, not in their pure state, 
as produced by them, but as they are corrected by Origen, and 
disfigured and corrupted by arrows and asterisks ; considering, 
too, that that translation included the additions from the 
edition of a blaspheming Jew, and do not rather prefer the 
humble translation of a Christian man from the original 
Hebrew. You would fain be regarded as a true lover of the 
septuagint version. 

It has not been so much my aim to supersede what I have 
formerly translated correctly from the Greek into Latin for 
those who are conversant only with my own language, as to 
lay before the reader the testimonies which have been preter- 
mitted or corrupted by the Jews, that my countrymen might 
be made acquainted with what the authentic Hebrew does 
really contain. No one need peruse what I write unless he is 
willing. Let him drink the old wine with what zest he may, 
and despise, if he be so minded, the new which I have since 
placed before him ; that what was before imperfectly under- 
stood, may become plain and clear. The kind of interpretation 
which should be adopted, or the exposition of the Scriptures, 
in the book which I have written on that subject, and the 
little prefaces which I have prefixed to my edition of the sacred 
volume, I have endeavoured to explain ; and to them I think 
I may refer the reader. And if, as you say, you welcome me 
in my corrections of the New Testament, and give as your 
reason that a large number by their acquaintance with the 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 635 

Greek language, are capable of doing justice to the merits of 
the work, you ought to think equally well of the integrity of 
my edition of the Old Testament, since it is not the product of 
my own invention, but the translation of the words of inspira- 
tion, as I have found them in the Hebrew original. 

It seems, therefore, from your statements, that something 
on the prophet Jonah was not rightly interpreted by me, and 
that the offence given by a single word put the bishop's high 
office in jeopardy. And you keep from me the disclosure of 
the particular error with which I am charged, thus denying 
me the opportunity of defending myself, in an answer to the 
accusation. And I should probably have remained in this 
ignorance, but for the assertion of Cornelius and Asinius made 
long ago, that I had given ivy as the meaning of the word in 
the original instead of gourd : respecting which point, having 
given a full answer in our commentary on the prophet Jonah, 
we shall content ourselves with saying here only thus much, 
that in the place in which the seventy, and Aquila, among 
others, have rendered the Hebrew by the word ivy, that is 
Kirov, the word in the original is fvp'p cicion, 65 which the 
Syrians call ciceiam. It is a kind of shrub, having broad 
leaves, like a vine. It rises quickly after being planted into 
a shrub without any props or supports, sustained upon its 
own stem. If I were to render the Hebrew word by cicion, 
nobody would be the wiser ; if by cucurbita, (gourd) I should 
make use of a word not in correspondence with the Hebrew. 
I have used hedera (ivy) in concurrence with other commen- 
tators. But if your Jews, as you say, either from malice or 
ignorance, affirm that the word in the Greek and Latin copies, 
is the same in signification as that in the Hebrew Scriptures, 
it is plain they are either ignorant of the Hebrew language, or 
choose to lie in order to laugh at the advocates of the gourd, 
or cucurbitarians. 

65 By others this has been thought to be the icporov or kiki of the Greeks, — 
the same as what we call palma Christi; which is chiefly found in America; 
and has received the name of Ricinifs Americanis. The Seventy have rendered 
the word by koXokwOtj. 



636 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

In conclusion, let me beg you not to force jmto the field a 
quiet old soldier, long laid by. You who have the strength 
of youth, and the influence of high station, teach the people, 
and enrich the families of Rome with the products of Africa ; 
for me, it is enough to whisper my lectures in the corner of 
a monastery to some simple auditor or reader who may think 
me worthy of his attention. 

HIERONYMUS AUGUSTINO. 

Domino vere sancto ac beatissimo Papse Augustino, Hiero- 

nymus in Christo salutem. 
Your letters assure me that you did not send that long letter, 
or rather book to Rome written to fall with all its weight upon 
my defenceless insignificance. Indeed, I had not heard that 
such was the fact, but the copies of a certain epistle seeming 
to be intended for me, found their way hither, by the hand of 
our brother the Deacon Sysinneus, in which you advise me 
to chant my palinode upon a certain chapter of the Apostles, 
and to imitate Stesichorus fluctuating between the invectives 
and praises of Helen, by reproaching whom he lost his eyes, 
and recovered them again by passing from reproaches to praise. 
In all simplicity I confess that although the style and method 
of reasoning seemed to be yours, still I could not hastily give 
credit to those copies, lest by the answer they might naturally 
produce, you might be wounded, and justly retort that it 
became me to wait for satisfactory proof that the letter was 
yours, before I answered it in such terms. What has tended 
to delay my answer, has been the long illness of the holy and 
venerable Paula ; for while I was taken up with my anxious 
attendance upon her in her drooping state, the very remem- 
brance of your letter, or of that which some one may have 
written in your name, was really banished from my mind; 
exemplifying what is said in Ecclesiasticus, 22nd chapter, "a 
tale out of time is as music in a time of mourning." 

If it be your letter, pray write* openly, or at least let me be 
favoured with genuine copies; that without any angry feelings 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 637 

we may conduct our controversy on points of Scripture ; and 
may correct our errors if we are in the wrong, or show wherein 
we have been groundlessly censured. But far be it from me 
that I should presume to find any fault with any thing written 
by one to whom so much reverence is due. It is quite enough 
for me to defend my own productions, without attacking those 
of others. Your experience must have well informed you that 
we all of us stand high in our own opinion, and that it is a 
puerile propensity to endeavour to set up one's own importance 
by disparaging illustrious names, I am not such a simpleton 
as to be hurt by your differing from me on any interpretation 
of Scripture, and you will not, I am sure, be offended when I 
express my dissentience from you. But we read in Persius's 
Satires, 66 what is the true character of reproof interchanged 
by friends : 

" Ut nemo in sese tent at descendere : nemo : 
Sed pracedenti spectatur mantica tergoP 

It remains only for me to add my request that you will continue 
to love one who really loves you ; and do not by your attacks 
draw me forth into the field on Scriptural topics. I have had 
my day, and have run as long as I could. Now while you 
pursue your course over a wider circuit, let me enjoy the repose 
which I trust I have earned. At the same time with your 
good leave I will borrow from the poets as well as you. Re- 
member Dares and Entellus ; and be mindful also of the 
vulgar proverb, that the " wearied ox treads with a heavier 
step." 

I have written these things with a mind ill at ease. Would 
that I were more worthy of your kind professions of attach- 
ment; and that, by comparing our thoughts in a personal 
intercourse, we might in some things be helps to each other. 
Calpurnius, 67 surnamed Lanarius, with his accustomed vio- 
lence, has sent me his maledictions, which, by his zeal, have 
found their way into Africa, and which I have in part briefly 

66 Sat. iv. 1. 221. 67 Rufinus. 



638 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

answered. I have sent you copies of his little book, and by 
the first opportunity you shall have the larger work ; in which 
I have been cautious not in anything to wound the cause of 
Christianity, my object being only to confute the mendacity, 
and expose the folly of an ignorant and frantic writer. Think 
of me, holy and venerable father. Consider as an evidence of 
my affection, my unwillingness to answer you, though chal- 
lenged by you ; and my backwardness in believing that of 
you, which in another I should probably reprehend. Our 
common brother most humbly salutes you. 



The irritable disposition of the same learned and distin- 
guished father further shews itself in another letter to Au- 
gustin, of which what follows is a part. 

" To make a frank confession of the truth, I felt at first a 
repugnance to answer you, because it was not perfectly clear 
that it was your letter which came to my hands, nor, according 
to the common saying, was the sword covered over with honey. 
In the next place, I was desirous of avoiding all appearance 
of answering a bishop of my own communion with irreverence, 
and to retort upon him his own reproof, especially as it might 
happen that some things in his letter might appear to my 
judgment to border upon heresy. And lastly, I was afraid 
you might expostulate, and say, " What ! had you then seen 
what you chose to consider as my epistle, and recognized in 
the subscription a hand-writing familiar to you, that you 
might have a pretext for injuring your friend ; and avail your- 
self of another's malice to fix a reproach upon me ? It comes 
to this; — either send me the same epistle signed with your 
hand, or desist from worrying an aged man, living concealed 
in the solitude of his cell. But if you desire to exercise or 
display your learning, do, pray, seek out some young men, 
eloquent and famous, such as are said to abound in Rome, 
who have both ability and courage, and are worthy to dispute 
with a bishop on Scriptural questions. As for me, who was 
once a soldier, but am now a veteran and unfit for service, my 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLL1NARIS. 639 

province is to sit by and applaud the victories of others; but 
by no means, with my worn-out body, to enter the field again. 
Should I be provoked to answer your repeated challenges, I 
will remind you of what history records of Fabius Maximus, 
who, by his wise delay, humbled the pride of the youthful 
Hannibal. 

" But since you protest that you wrote no epistle against 
me, nor sent to Rome anything to the same purpose not writ- 
ten by you; and further add, that if any matters shall be 
found in any of your writings which maintains an opinion op- 
posed to mine, no attack was thereby meditated upon me, to 
wound my character or feelings, but that you merely com- 
mitted to paper what appeared to you to be right; I only 
request you to hear me with patience. You have not written 
an epistle ! Then can you explain how it is that I find myself 
censured by you in what was written by others ; and that all 
Italy should be in possession of what was not written by you. 
And yet you seem to expect an answer from me to what you 
say you did not write; which is surely unreasonable. 

" Do not think me so absurd as to be mortified by your 
differing from me in opinion. But I do say, that if you find 
fault with anything said by me in conversation with you ; and 
exact from me an apology for my writings, and call upon me 
to reform what I have written, and urge me to sing my pali- 
node, and talk of teaching me to use my eyes better; in all 
this, I must think that a wound is given to our friendship, 
and the rights of that intimate relation violated. I am anxious 
that we may not appear to be carrying on a childish contest, 
or afford matter of controversy or faction to any who take the 
part of one of us against the other, or to our common detrac- 
tors ; for I do really much wish to love you with all Christian 
truth and purity ; nor do I say one thing and think another. 
It would indeed be most strange and unseemly if I, who have 
been labouring from my youth till this present moment in a 
little monastery, among my pious brothers, should presume to 
write anything against a bishop of my own communion, and 
that, too, a bishop whom I began to love before I enjoyed a per- 



640 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

sonal acquaintance with him ; who invited me to become his 
friend by making the first advances ; whose rising merit, as 
cultivating after me the study of the sacred Scriptures, I 
viewed with much delight. Upon the strength of all this, I 
call upon you either to deny the epistle in question to be 
yours, if this be so ; and cease to ask for an answer to a letter 
which you say you did not write ; or ingenuously to own it to 
be yours, that, if I shall write anything in defence of myself, 
the blame may rest upon you, who have provoked the answer, 
not on me who have been compelled to make it. You add, 
moreover, that if anything in your writings have made me 
uneasy, or have seemed to me to require correction, you will 
listen to my remarks as coming from a brother, and will not 
only rejoice in them as a proof of my attachment, but pray 
that I will persist in the same friendly interference. 

" Again hear what I think. You challenge an old man, 
and force a silent one into controversy; while you seem to 
brandish your learning in my face. But it would ill become 
my age to give place to any angry feelings in my intercourse 
with one towards whom I ought to demean myself with all 
kindness and respect. Since perverse men have always found 
something in the prophets and evangelists with which they 
endeavour to find fault ; do you wonder that in your books, 
and especially in your exposition of the Scriptures, which are 
often very obscure in some things, you should seem to deviate 
from the correct path ? And this I say, not in reference to 
any passages in your writings which I think reprehensible. 
Indeed, I have not given any particular attention to the perusal 
of them ; nor do the copies of them abound with us, except 
the books of your Soliloquies, and your Commentaries on the 
Psalms, which, if I were willing to discuss, I could tell you, 
perhaps, that they are sometimes at variance, not with mine, 
for I am nothing, but with the sense of the old Greek inter- 
preters. Farewell, my very dear friend, in age my son, but 
in dignity my parent ; and take care, I pray you, in future, 
that whatever you write to me may come to me before it goes 
to others." 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 641 

The following portion of a letter, written in answer to the 
above rather peevish attack of Jerom, bears a favourable tes- 
timony to the Christian temper of Augustin. 

" Far be it from me to be mortified by your being willing 
and able to shew, that you have understood the passage in 
question from St. Paul, or any other passage of the sacred 
Scriptures, more correctly than myself; nay, far be it from 
me not to receive the boon with gratitude, if I should gather 
instruction from your teaching, and improvement from your 
correction. Truly, my very dear brother, unless you felt your- 
self wounded by what I wrote, you would not suppose that I 
could be wounded by what you wrote in answer. I have 
always thought too well of your sincerity to doubt of your 
being really hurt, when you write in terms which wounded 
feelings could alone justify. But if, when you do not write to 
me in this tone, you should deem so ill of me as to suppose it 
possible for me to be irritated, you would indeed wound me, 
by entertaining such thoughts of me." 

He then makes the following acknowledgment, " And now it 
remains only for me to acknowledge my fault, in giving you the 
first offence by that letter, of which I must confess myself to 
have been indeed the writer. For why strive against the 
current, and not rather at once throw myself upon your 
clemency. I beseech you,- therefore, by the gentleness of 
Christ, if I have given you uneasiness, to pass it by ; and not 
to return evil for evil, by exciting in me the same painful 
feelings. At the same time, let me assure you that you will 
always mortify me by omitting to tell me plainly of my errors, 
either in acts or in words. If, indeed, you blame me for what 
is not reprehensible, you injure yourself rather than me. But 
far be it from your manners, and the purposes of your pious 
mind, to blame me, with a design to give me pain ; passing a 
cutting censure upon me for that for which your heart tells 
you I ought not to be blamed. You may reprove with tender- 
ness one who has committed no fault, but whom you think to 
be in fault, or you may do it with so much kindness, and in 
such a spirit of paternal affection, as to soften one whom you 

T T 



642 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

cannot discard. You may take an erroneous view of a fact, 
and yet see nothing in a light which charity forbids. I will 
very thankfully receive your reproofs, which I know to proceed 
from a most friendly disposition towards me, even where the 
subject of your blame is capable of being well defended ; and 
shall always be ready to confess your kindness, and my own 
delinquency ; and, by the grace of God, I trust I shall be found 
better for your correction, and thankful for being made so. 
Why, then, if your words be salutary, though a little hard, 
need I fear them as the cestus of Entellus. Dares was beaten 
and vanquished, but neither cared for, nor cured ; but if I 
quietly receive your medicinal chastisement, it will leave 
behind it no cause of regret. 

If, indeed, my human weakness, when I am convicted on 
just and true grounds, cannot help being somewhat painfully 
affected, it is better to suffer pain in being cured, than to escape 
pain by retaining one's malady. This was well understood by 
him who said that accusing enemies are more useful than 
friends, who fear to reprove. Those who treat us reproachfully, 
furnish us occasionally with hints for our correction ; but 
flattering friends sacrifice the sacred rights of justice rather 
than disturb the smooth current of affection. If, then, you 
are to be likened to a tired ox, it is because, perhaps, age has 
relaxed your sinews without reducing the vigour of your 
mind ; while in the Lord's threshing-floor you remit nothing 
of your fruitful labour. Lo, then, here I am at your mercy ! 
if anything has unadvisedly escaped my lips, let the weight 
of your tread be upon me. Such pressure ought not to be 
grievous to me, so long as my fault is thereby sifted, and 
the wheat is separated from the straw and chaff. The senti- 
ments you express towards the end of your letter I read and 
recall to memory with a sigh of sincere regret. " I wish, 
you say, I better deserved to embrace, and to be embraced by 
you ; by an interchange of our thoughts, face to face, we 
should teach and learn with mutual advantage." To which I 
answer, would that we lived at a less distance from one ano- 
ther, so that, if our opportunities of personal intercourse were 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINTARIS. 643 

not improved, our correspondence by letter might at least 
become more easy and frequent. But now, unhappily, at so 
great a distance are we thrown from each other, that I re- 
member my writing to you when I was but a youth, concern- 
ing those words of the Apostle in his letter to the. Galatians, 
and behold, I am become an old man without having yet 
merited an answer. Copies of my epistle have more easily 
found their way to you, by what means I know not, than the 
letter itself, the conveyance of which I had myself done my 
best to secure ; for the man to whose care I had committed 
the same, neither brought you that letter, or to me any letter 
in return. 

So important have been the contents of those of your letters 
which have reached my hands, that I could not wish for any 
thing better for the successful prosecution of my studies than 
to be constantly by your side. But as this cannot be, I medi- 
tate sending one of our children in the Lord to be instructed 
by you, if upon this subject I shall be thought worthy of an 
answer. For I neither have acquired, nor am able to acquire 
that knowledge of the Holy Scriptures which you possess; 
and if I do possess any of this knowledge, I expend it all on 
the people of God : for I have really no leisure from rny minis- 
terial occupations for any studies but those by which the people 
under my charge may be edified. 

I know not what evil reports have reached us here, in 
writing, concerning you. I have received, however, the 
answer to them which you have been so kind as to send 
to me ; on the perusal of which, I own I felt truly sorry that 
between such dear and intimate friends, 68 united by a bond 



68 The dissension between Jerom and Ruffinus is a well known event of 
ecclesiastical history. The cause of this great evil in the church was a Latin 
version of the work of Origen, 7repi ap%<uv, which was executed by the presbyter 
of Aquileia, at Rome, about the year 398 ; and to which he prefixed a preface, 
wherein Jerom, with much praise, was represented as having espoused the tenets 
of Origen, and as associated with himself in opinion. He boasted that he 
could bring out the work of Origen, freed by himself from the errors imputed to 
it ; but as many dangerous opinions still appeared in the work exhibited by 



644 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

of attachment known through all the churches, so much sad 
discord should have arisen. The control, indeed, which you 
exert over yourself, and the degree in which you restrain the 
risings of indignation from answering reproaches by reproaches, 
sufficiently appears by your letters. Nevertheless when I read 
those letters, I was overcome by grief, and petrified with fear 
at the very thought of the vexation I should feel if what Ruf- 
finus had written against you should fall into my hands. "Woe 
unto the world because of offences. " Behold the time is come, 
behold now is fulfilled what the truth has predicted. " Because 
iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." 
Where is to be found mutual trust and confidence? where 
can love securely repose ? where is the friend who is not to 
be feared as a future enemy ? if between Hieronymus and 
Ruffinus such a lamentable feud can arise ? O wretched and 
deplorable state of things ! O that mutual distrust which will 
not suffer friends who have no knowledge of what may befal 
them, to enjoy their present felicity! But why should we 
complain of the changeableness of another, when we are all so 
ignorant of our future selveSo Hardly does a man know him- 
self as he is ; how then can he tell what he will be. If not 
only this knowledge of what one is, but also of what one will 
be, were the property of the holy and blessed angels, how 
Satan could have been blessed when as yet he was a good 
angel, with such knowledge of his future iniquity, and his 
everlasting punishment, I do not see. On which matter, as 



Ruffinus, Pammachius and Oceanus persuaded Jerom to produce a faithful 
interpretation of it, that the errors it contained might appear in their full extent, 
and so to manifest to the world that the suspicion endeavoured to be cast upon 
him by his rival of being a favourer of Origen, was without foundation. When 
thus an exact translation of Origen's work was produced, his opinions stood out 
in their real deformity. Jerom at the same time published an epistle to Pam- 
machius and Oceanus, in which he repelled the calumny of his approval of 
Origen, and explained the intention and reservation with which he had formerly 
commended Origen. By this quarrel the whole state of the church was thrown 
into much agitation. Ruffinus wrote a defence of himself to Pope Anastasius, 
in which fresh calumnies were thrown upon Jerom, and to which Jerom an- 
swered in three apologetical books. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINAttlS. 645 

far as you think the subject of any importance, I should be 
glad to have your opinion. But see the effect of this wide 
personal separation, with so much sea and land between us. 
Were I in the place of this letter when you read it, you could 
answer my question at once. But when will you write? when 
will you send to me ? when will what you send find its way to 
this quarter? when will it come to my hands? what I desire 
under actual circumstances is this, that what can not be as 
soon as I could wish it to be, I may wait for with patience : 
and to strengthen this patience, I recur to those truly refreshing 
words of your letter so full of sanctified affection, and endeavour 
to make them my own. O could I deserve your embrace, and 
enjoy in person that intercourse in which, as you have ex- 
pressed it, we might mutually teach and be taught ! if, indeed, 
by any possibility I could be your instructor. There is a sort 
of freshness and delight in dwelling upon these thoughts, not 
only as they are expressed in your words, but even in my own. 
And although they cannot bring us into contact, they so draw 
our minds together in a mutual dependance, that to me they 
are a source of no little comfort. Then again, I am affected 
with the keenest sorrow that between you and Ruffinus, to 
whom God has conceded in so large a measure those gifts 
which have always been the objects of our most ardent wishes, 
and who have in such close and intimate friendship partaken 
together of the honey of the holy Scriptures, so bitter a quarrel 
should have arisen. What time, what place, what human 
being can in future be regarded as secure from discord ; after 
it has been found that a quarrel so severe could happen to such 
men as you, mature in age, and in communion with your 
Saviour; at a time too, when having rid yourselves alike of 
your worldly burthens, you were following the Lord as com- 
panions, and were walking harmoniously together in that land 
which our Lord had trod with human feet, and where he had 
said, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." 

Truly this life is a continual trial. Alas ! that I cannot 
somewhere meet you together ; that I might cast myself at 
your feet ; pour out my tears without restraint, and give full 



646 FROM THE TIME OF LIBAN1US 

vent to my love in the language of supplication, addressed to 
each of you for his own sake, and to each for the sake of the 
other, and to both, for the sake of all others ; and especially 
of the poor and weak, for whom Christ died, and who now 
regard you as great actors on life's theatre, with no little danger 
to themselves. Do not in your writings concerning each 
other 69 spread abroad things which you will be unable to 
cancel or obliterate when, if ever, a reconciliation shall take 
place, — things which you will be afraid to read, as containing 
the elements of a new discord between you. 

I must confess to you that nothing disheartened me so much 
as this example, when I read in your letter to me some certain 
indications of your sore displeasure ; not in what you say of 
Entellus and the tired ox, for in that I see rather a playful than 
an angry spirit, but in what you write in a more serious mood ; 
as when you say "lest perhaps being wounded and irritated, 
you might think it just to expostulate. " Let us, I beseech 
you, if it be possible, inquire into and discuss such matters 
only as can not endanger our friendship ; but if I can not say 
what I think requires correction in your writings, nor you in 
mine, without the suspicion of envy, or a wound given to 
friendship ; let us, I pray, as we value our comfort and our 
soul's health, abstain from all topics of communication. Far, 
indeed, do I feel myself to be from that perfection, of which 
it is written " If any one offends not in word, he is a perfect 
man." But surely I may expect easily to obtain your forgive- 
ness, in accordance with the mercy we expect from God, if in 
any thing I have given you offence. And when I have the 
misfortune so to do, you ought frankly to tell me of it, that by 
such disclosure you may benefit your brother ; and, con- 



69 What scholar in reading this sentiment has not the beautiful passage, 
which Sophocles puts into the mouth of Ajax, brought to his mind : 

6 T SxOpOQ TJjllV £Q TOGOvd' £%0paiT£Oe , 

tog kcli (j)iXr]crov av9ig. 'Ecxpoic. Aiag, 679. 

Our hostility towards an enemy should never be carried so far, as not to leave 
room for returning friendship. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 647 

sidering the length of territory that keeps us from communi- 
cation, my errors are entitled to your forbearance. For myself 
I will say, that as to those things the knowledge of which we 
both of us covet ; if at any time I know, or believe, or think 
I hold a right opinion though different from yours, I will en- 
deavour to maintain that opinion, by the grace of God, in such 
a manner as to avoid giving you the least umbrage or offence. 
But if I shall in spite of my caution be so unhappy as to incur 
your displeasure, my next endeavour shall be to obtain your 
pardon. I cannot, however, persuade myself that you can be 
offended with me, unless for having said something which I 
ought not to have said, or for having said something in a way 
in which I ought not to have said it; nor does it appear 
strange to me that we ourselves should know less of each 
other's mind, from direct intercourse by letters, than from 
the communications of our familiar and intimate friends ; 
upon whose benevolence and candour, when wearied with 
the calumnies of the world, I cast myself with entire con- 
fidence; for in the charity of my friends I recognize the 
Divine guidance, and to that guidance I commit myself with a 
mind devoid of fear and anxiety, while I am fully impressed 
with the uncertainty which hangs over the events of the 
morrow, as far as they belong to human fragility. For when 
I perceive that a man with a bosom glowing with Christian 
charity, has become my faithful friend, whatsoever thoughts 
or counsels of my heart I confide to such a man, I consider 
myself as committing them to Him who has made him what he 
is. God is love, and whosoever abideth in love, abideth in God : 
and upon the absence or presence of love in the bosom, de- 
pends much of the felicity or sorrow of life. But if from an 
intimate friend, a man becomes my enemy, I would rather his 
ingenuity should be tasked to find something to charge me 
with, than his anger be supplied with what he may betray 
concerning me ; and the best way of putting things in this 
position, is not to conceal what one does, but to do only what 
one has no need to conceal. The mercy of God enables the 
good and pious to live securely and without fear amidst those 



648 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

friends who may become their enemies, by neither betraying 
the errors of those who confide in them, nor doing what may 
make them dependent on the secrecy of others. What the 
tongue of the slanderer may forge against us, is either dis- 
credited, or if believed, affects our fame only, without injury 
to the soul's welfare. When evil is done, some enemy is 
always in the secret ; without waiting for loquacity or quarrel 
to make their disclosures. 

Who that has discernment does not see with what equani- 
mity you bear the incredible hostility of your once most inti- 
mate and familiar friend ; 70 your conscience consoling you ; 
and how you cut down his boastings, which may have been 
too much listened to by some, with your armour on the left; 
for with the armour on the left hand, as well as with the armour 
on the right, the battle is to be maintained against the great 
adversary; though it were to be desired that the contest between 
you should cease by his becoming gentler, rather than by your 
becoming more formidably armed. A truly wonderful thing it 
is to see the transition from such friendships to such enmities ; 
and joyful indeed would it be to witness the return to concord, 
from quarrels so unnatural. 71 

70 Ruffinus. 

71 A letter written in a more Christian spirit is not to be found among the 
best scholars in the school of Christ ; and one cannot but regret the oppo- 
sition existing between this delightful document, and the sentiments and opinions 
which occasionally, but unfrequently, escape from the pen of this most amiable 
of all the fathers. In his long and elaborate epistle to Vincentius, though he 
acknowledges there was a time in which he disapproved of force being em- 
ployed against heretics, yet he declares himself to have altered his opinion in 
that respect, from having observed that the laws enacted against heretics by 
the Emperor had wrought well in producing conversion. His arguments are 
as defective in force, as the cause in which they were used was unsound. One 
is also astonished to hear this good father maintaining an opinion so truculent 
and tremendous, as that infants dying before baptism, have their doom in hell, 
— going beyond all others, on this point, none having pronounced a more 
terrific judgment upon these unconsecrated babes, than their exclusion from 
the beatific vision, unless it be a celebrated teacher in the schools, called Grego- 
rius Araminensis, who had the name given him of Tormentum infantium. It 
is wiser, surely, not to pass the barrier of that holy interdict which is implied 
in the silence of Scripture on this subject : hidden as it is among the deep 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 649 



FROM JEROM TO AUGUSTIN. 

To the very reverend and blessed father Augustin, Hierom 
sends health in Christ. Last year I sent a letter to your 
grace by our brother Asterius, sub-deacon, carrying with 
him the ready tribute of our homage, which I assure myself 
was not omitted by him to be duly rendered. Now, again, by 
my reverend brother Presidius, the deacon, I entreat you first 
that you keep me in your memory; then that you will give a 
kind reception to the bearer of this letter, whom you will 
understand to be a very near relative of mine ; and to whom 
I request you to supply whatever he may have occasion for ; 
not that he is in any indigence (his Lord having provided for 
him), but what he covets most earnestly is the friendship of 
good men, which he regards as a benefit of the greatest value. 
Why he undertakes this voyage to the west you will hear best 
from his own mouth. We, whose lot it is to live in a monastery, 
are tossed about in a stormy medium, and stationary as we 
may seem to be, endure as many troubles as any voyager is 
exposed to. But we trust in him who has said, " Be of good 
courage, I have overcome the world," that with Him for our 
disposer and guide we shall be victorious over our enemy the 
devil. To our holy and venerable father Alipius, I beg my 
humble salutations. The holy brothers who zealously serve 
the Lord in this monastery affectionately salute you. May 
Christ, the Lord Almighty, keep you in health, and me in your 
remembrance, my truly sanctified and much to be revered 
father. 

things of God, which no line of human thought can fathom, and into which it 
were profane inquisitiveness to search : it is our plain duty to put ourselves on 
the safe side, by doing what we are commanded to do, when we can, and if we 
are prevented by what is not within our control, we may rest assured that the 
Judge of all the earth cannot but do right. 

Neither must it be concealed that this excellent person entertained a strange 
notion about the time taken up in the creation of the world ; also respecting 
the nature and propensities of angels ; and was one among others of the ancient 
fathers, whose opinion it was that the souls of departed men were kept in some 
dark and dreary confinement awaiting the summons of the general resurrection. 



650 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 



FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 

To the very reverend, &c. When I enquired of our brother 
Firmus after your welfare, it was with much pleasure that I 
received the assurance of your being safe and well. But 
when I was expecting, no, I will not say expecting, but rather 
claiming a letter from you, he told me that he left Africa 
without your knowing of his departure. I have charged him 
with my dutiful respects to you, as one who loves you with a 
singular attachment. At the same time I beseech you to 
allow for my feelings, which would not suffer me to refuse 
to write again to you in compliance with his earnest solicita- 
tions. But it is not I, but the cause itself, which seems to 
answer in its own vindication ; and if my answer is in fault, 
allow me without offence to say, it was a much greater fault 
to have provoked the answer. Let there be between us a 
sincere and pure friendship, and then will our correspondence 
be a commerce of charity, not of contention. Our pious 
brotherhood send you their warmest greetings; and I en- 
treat you to be the bearer of my humble salutations to those 
holy men, who, together with you, sustain the easy yoke of 
Christ, and especially to the venerable Alipius. May Christ 
Almighty keep you in safety, and full remembrance of me, 
my revered and blessed father. If you have read my com- 
mentary on Jonah, I think you will hardly maintain the 
ridiculous controversy about the gourd. But if the friend 
who first made an assault upon me with his sword, is repelled 
by my style, let your humanity and justice lead you to the 
conclusion, that not he who answers, but he who has provoked 
the answer is the person to be blamed. If on scriptural 
questions we are to meet in the field of controversy, do let us 
play with our weapons without inflicting pain on each other. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 651 



AUGUSTIN TO JEROM. 

To my most beloved Lord, &c. Salutem. Some time has now- 
elapsed since I sent a long epistle, in answer to that one of 
yours which you remember to have sent by your respected son 
Asterius ; the same who is now not only my brother, but also 
my colleague : which letter, whether it ever reached you, or 
were thought worthy of your perusal, I really do not know ; 
unless that, indeed, by our most worthy brother Firmus you 
say, that if he who commenced the attack upon me with a 
sword, was repelled by a style, it was to be expected of my 
humanity and justice that I should blame the accuser, not the 
person defending himself by his answer. From this very 
slight indication only, I conjecture that you have read my 
said epistle. In that letter, truly I lamented that such dis- 
sension should have arisen between those whose great friend- 
ship had rejoiced every bosom alive to the blessings of fraternal 
amity, wherever the fame of it had been diffused. But do 
not imagine that there is blended with these regrets the 
smallest doubt of the rectitude of your conduct in this unfor- 
tunate affair, my heart being touched only with the melancholy 
lot of poor humanity, whose friendships cannot be sustained 
for a short period by the ties of mutual charity. I would fain 
be certified by your own hand, in answer to this letter, whether 
the pardon I have sought to obtain is granted to me. I wish 
for something more explicit from you on this head, though I 
cannot but infer from the more cheerful aspect of your letters, 
that I have obtained my object; if indeed those letters were 
written after the receipt of mine, which, however, is by no 
means made clear by their contents. 

You ask, or rather in the confidence of friendship you com- 
mand, that in the field of sacred literature we may amuse 
ourselves without giving each other any uneasiness. For my 
own part, I would rather discuss these things in a serious than 
in a playful manner. But if the word sport or play pleases 
you, as seeming to pledge you to little exertion, I must con- 



652 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

fess myself to expect something better from a mind so power- 
ful, benevolent, learned, zealous, liberal, matured, ingenious, 
and diligent as yours, the Holy Spirit not merely giving you 
faculties, but dictating the exercise of them, so that in great 
and laborious questions your help is most valuable, I will not 
say to him who sports upon the plain of sacred literature, but 
to him who presses upwards to the mountain heights with 
breathless ardour. But if on account of its sprightly import, 
you think the discussion of these questions is best expressed 
by the word ' ludamus' among those who are very dear to 
each other; w 7 hether the subject of our inquiry be plain and 
open, or arduous and intricate, I beseech you to instruct me 
how, when any thing awakens in us a particular interest, 
which, if not difficult of proof to the sagacious, is entirely so 
to such as are dull of apprehension, if, in maintaining our 
own opinions, we express ourselves with freedom, we shall 
avoid being suspected of the puerile vanity of seeking to 
raise our own importance by disparaging illustrious names. 
Let me beg of you, that when, to soften the asperity of 
any argument which I am compelled to use, in refuting 
what I deem to be erroneous, I endeavour to throw around 
it some conciliating language, I may not be considered as 
drawing a sword smeared over with honey. Unless, perhaps, 
the properer mode of avoiding the danger of giving offence 
by any form of argument, when one is disputing with his 
superior in learning, is uniformly to acquiesce in all his dicta, 
nor to venture upon an objection even for the sake of inquiry. 
Then, indeed, we may play with each other without the fear 
of offending, but not, or it would be wonderful, without the 
mischief of sporting with ourselves. 

But I cannot allow Scripture to be so tampered with ; for I 
confess to you, that all the sacred writings which are called 
canonical I have learned to regard with such reverence and 
honour, that none of those by whom they were composed 
have, according to my most firm belief, erred in any thing ; 
and if T. meet with any matter in those writings which appears 
opposed to truth, it is, I doubt not, to be imputed to a blunder 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 653 

of the copier, or to an error of the translator, or to my own 
defective understanding of the passage. With 1 espect to other 
writers, however distinguished they may be by their sanctity 
or learning, I do not think what they say to be true, because 
it has their authority to support it, but so far only as it is con- 
firmed by canonical authors — or is supported upon strong 
grounds of probability. Nor do I think, my brother, that on 
this point you entertain an opinion at variance with mine; 
nor can I suppose that it is your wish, that what you write 
should be read with the same homage as those of the Prophets 
and Apostles, concerning whose writings it is impious to doubt 
that they are free from all error. Far be this from your pious 
humility, and the pure commerce you hold with your own 
spirit, to which is to be attributed the wish you express for 
that personal intercourse which would make us reciprocally 
teachers and learners of many good things : which, if I believe 
you to have said in truth and sincerity, how much more due 
from me must it be to believe that the Apostle Paul thought 
as he wrote when he expressed himself in the following terms 
concerning Peter and Barnabas, " When I saw that they 
walked not uprightly, according to the truth of th t Gospel, I 
said unto Peter before them all, ' If thou, being a Jew, livest 
after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why 
compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?' Of 
what can I be certain that it has not deceived me, if the 
Apostle was capable of deceiving his own children, whom he 
had begotten again until Christ, who is the truth, should be 
formed in them : to whom, when he says, ' what I write unto 
you behold, before God I lie not/ he did, nevertheless, not 
write truly, but deceived them by I know not what ministerial 
or official falsehood, in saying that he had seen Peter and 
Barnabas walking not uprightly according to the truth of the 
Gospel, and that he had withstood Peter to the face, for no 
other reason than that he had compelled the Gentiles to 
judaize. Is it better to believe that the Apostle Paul wrote 
any thing untruly, than that the Apostle Peter did any thing 
that was wrong ? If this be so, we might say, which God 



654 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

forbid I that it is better to believe that the Gospel was untrue, 
than that Christ was denied by Peter : and that the book of 
Kings was false, than that so great a Prophet, so eminently 
chosen by the Lord God, coveted and committed adultery 
with the wife of another man, and by the slaughter of her 
husband added to the sin of adultery a most horrid homicide. 
For my own part, firmly relying on the unerring veracity of 
Holy Scripture, I shall always read the sacred record as 
verified by the highest testimony of heavenly authority ; and 
shall see in it the examples of men approved, corrected, or 
condemned, faithfully set forth, rather than suffer myself to 
cavil at the Divine document, because I feel it hard to credit 
the account of so much human depravity in persons so distin- 
guished by their general excellence. The Manicheans, whose 
nefarious error stands confuted by the clearest sense of Holy 
Scripture, because they are unable to distort its sacred mean- 
ing into an agreement with their false opinions, are daring 
enough to deny its authority ; in such a way, indeed, as not 
directly to impute falsehood to the Apostles themselves, but 
to certain (who they are I know not) corrupters of the text ; 
when, however, they can support these assertions neither by 
the number and antiquity of the copies, nor by the authority 
or just interpretation of the language from which the interpre- 
tation into Latin has been made, they retreat from the contest 
overpowered by the force of simple and undeniable truth. 

Is it not then obvious to your correct discernment, how much 
countenance is administered to the above named heretics, 
when we do not merely say that the apostolical writings have 
been falsified, but that the Apostles themselves have written 
falsehoods : for you say, that it is not credible that Paul 
should have meant to have blamed Peter for doing what he, 
Paul, himself had done. I am not now inquiring what he 
did, but what he has written. It is most material to my 
argument, that the verity of the Holy Scriptures, which were 
given us to build up our precious faith, not by ordinary testi- 
mony, but by the Apostles themselves, and on that account to 
be received as entitled to our entire belief, and as standing on 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 655 

the highest ground of authority, should in every part be 
raised above all doubt or dispute. Now if Peter did only 
that which it was right in him to do, Paul must have falsified 
the fact, when he said that he perceived him walking not 
according to the truth of the Gospel. If, therefore, Paul 
wrote truly, Peter did not walk rightly according to the truth 
of the Gospel. He did that which he ought not to have done. 
And if Paul had done something himself of the same kind, I 
would rather believe that he was capable of forgetting in his 
own practice the correction he had given to his co-apostle 
than suppose that he inserted a falsehood in any of his epistles, 
especially in one in which he had previously said, " the things 
which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not." My 
belief, therefore, is this — that Peter did what he did, that he 
might induce the Gentiles to judaize; for that is what Paul 
wrote, whom I believe incapable of falsifying. And in that 
Peter acted wrongly, for it was contrary to the Gospel to say 
that they who believed in Christ were not safe without retain- 
ing the old ceremonies of the first dispensation. It was for 
this that the believing Jews of Antioch contended : whom Paul 
perseveringly and sharply opposed. He neither circumcised 
Timothy, norperformed his vow at Cenchrea, nor by the advice 
of James joined in the observance of the same rites with those 
who had vowed, to make it appear that he thought that Chris- 
tian salvation depended upon any such ceremonies, but that he 
might not be considered as condemning those things which 
God had commanded to be observed by the former generation 
as the prefiguration of things to come, as if they were upon a 
footing with the idolatries of the heathens. For this is what 
James said to him upon that occasion,— that it had been heard 
of him that he taught a defection from Moses; implying that 
it was an impiety in the believers in Christ to be separated 
from the Prophet of Christ, by condemning the doctrine of 
which Christ himself had said, " Had ye believed Moses, 
ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me." Attend, I 
beseech you, to the words of James, " Thou seest, brother, how 
many thousands of Jews there are which believe, and they 



656 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

are all zealous of the law : and they are informed of thee that 
thou teachest all the Jews, which are among the Gentiles, to 
forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their 
children, neither to walk after the customs. What is it there- 
fore? The multitude must needs come together; for they 
will hear that thou art come. Do, therefore, this that we 
say to thee ; we have four men who have a vow on them ; 
them take, and purify thyself with them, and be at charges 
with them, that they may shave their heads: and all may 
know that those things whereof they were informed concern- 
ing thee are nothing, but that thou thyself also walkest 
orderly, and keepest the law. As touching the Gentiles which 
believe, we have written and concluded, that they observe 
no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from 
things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, 
and from fornication." 71 

It is plain, I conceive, that James gave this advice to Paul, 
that the believing Jews who retained a zeal for the law might 
know that what they had been told concerning Paul was not 
true ; nor be made to think that the ministrations of Moses 
to their fathers were meant to be condemned as sacrilegious, 
and contrary to the commandments of God. These charges 
against Paul had not originated with those who understood 
with w 7 hat intention these ceremonies might be observed by 
those believing Jews who were still zealously attached to their 
ancient usages, from a reverence to their divine authority and 
prophetic sanctity, unmixed with any belief in their power of 
procuring or promoting their salvation, which they knew to 
be revealed only through Christ, and ministered in the sacra- 
ment of baptism ; but with those who wished these ceremonies 
to be kept up as essential to salvation, for they well knew 
that Paul w 7 as a most earnest preacher of grace, teaching that, 
not by the works of the law men were to be justified, but by 
the grace of Jesus Christ, of which the law contained the 
types and shadows. These men, in order to stir up strife and 
envy against him, proclaimed him as the enemy of the law 

71 Acts xxi. 25. 



TO THE TIME OF STDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 657 

and of the divine commandments; whose false accusations 
could in no way be more properly confuted than by his con- 
forming to those very ceremonies which he was accused of 
denouncing as impious; shewing it to be his opinion, that 
neither were the Jews to be forbidden the exercise of them, as 
essentially wicked and criminal, nor the Gentiles to be compelled 
to adopt them as necessary to salvation. For if he really did 
denounce those ceremonies as had been reported of him, and 
only adopted them in the instances above mentioned, to feign 
a regard for them, and to conceal his real sentiments, James 
would not have said to him, " And all will know, but all will 
think that what they have heard of you is false;" especially 
as in Jerusalem itself the Apostles had already decreed that 
no one should compel the Gentiles to judaize; but they liad 
not decreed that no one should prohibit the Jews from 
judaizing, although the Christian doctrine by no means called 
upon them so to do. Moreover, if, after this decree of the 
Apostles, Peter practised that dissimulation in Antioch, where- 
by he called upon the Gentiles to adopt the customs of the 
Jews, which he himself was not compelled to adopt, although 
from respect to institutions of divine ordination, he was not 
interdicted from so doing, what wonder is it if Paul con- 
strained him to declare plainly, what he had so recently con- 
curred with the other Apostles in decreeing. 

But if Peter did this, as I incline to think he did, before 
the said decree was pronounced at Jerusalem, it is the less 
to be wondered at, that Paul was desirous that he should not 
timidly disguise, but openly and faithfully assert what he 
well knew to be his real opinion ; either from having conferred 
with him upon the subject, or because he had been divinely 
admonished on this question in the calling of Cornelius the 
centurion, or because he had been seen to eat with the Gen- 
tiles before those, of whose censures he was afraid, were come 
to Antioch. For we do not deny that Peter was really of the 
same mind with Paul in this matter. Paul, therefore, on this 
occasion, brought no new truth to the conscience or recollec- 
tion of Peter, but convicted him of dissimulation in calling 

u u 



658 



FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 



upon the Gentiles to judaize : and the dissimulation consisted 
in this, that he gave his sanction to the doctrine of those who 
maintained that believers in Christ could not be saved without 
circumcision, and those other observances, which were only 
shadows and prefigurations of what was to come. 

Paul's reason for circumcising Timothy was this — that it 
might not appear to the Jews, and especially to his kindred 
on the mother's side, that circumcision was held by him in 
abhorrence, as worthy only of an idolatrous people ; whereas 
circumcision was grounded on divine authority, and idolatry 
was a delusion of Satan. Titus, on the other hand, he did 
not circumcise, lest he should give colour to the false per- 
suasion of those who thought that without circumcision there 
was no salvation, and might borrow the example of Paul to 
diffuse this persuasion among the Gentile converts. All which 
he plainly intimates in saying, " but neither Titus, who was 
with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised ; 
and that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who 
came in privily to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ 
Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage. To whom we 
gave place by subjection, no not for an hour; that the truth 
of the Gospel might continue with you." 

Here he shews, by his omitting circumcision in one case, 
and practising it in another, the opinion he entertained of 
the Jewish ceremonies, as not being of obligation, nor yet to 
be rejected as impious. And, at the same time, we should be 
careful to avoid that notion of some philosophers, who place 
certain acts in a middle state, between rectitude and trans- 
gression, ascribing to them neither the qualities of the one, 
nor of the other ; while we avoid the other extreme, of holding 
that to observe the ceremonies of the law cannot, under any 
circumstances, be matter of indifference, but must be either 
positively good, or positively bad : so that if we pronounce 
them good, we admit our obligation to perform them ; if bad, 
then we must believe the Apostles, in the case under con- 
sideration, not truly and faithfully, but in appearance only, to 
have conformed to them. 



TO THE TIME OF S1DON1US APOLLINARIS. 659 

But it is not the imitation of the philosophers, who pay 
some respect to truth in their disputations, from the imputa- 
tion of which I am so desirous of defending the Apostles, as 
from that of the advocates of the forum, who, in their plead- 
ings in other men's causes, allow themselves to falsify ; and 
whose example cannot, I think, be borrowed in expounding 
the epistle to the Galatians, to confirm the inference of dissimu- 
lation in the Apostles in the matter of the Jewish ceremonies; 
but if it may, I surely need not scruple, in discussing the 
subject with you, to advert to the dogmas of the philosophers, 
who are not to be discredited as dealing altogether in falsities, 
but as relying upon what is in the greater part false, and who 
where they happen to be true, are still aliens from the grace of 
Him who is truth itself. But why may I not say that the sacra- 
ments which were commanded under the old dispensation are 
neither good, in as much as men can not be justified by them, 
for they only are the shadows and prenunciators of the grace 
whereby we are justified; nor altogether bad, in as much as 
they were instituted by divine authority, and were suited to 
the seasons and occasions to which they related ; more espe- 
cially, too, when it is remembered that God himself declares, 
by the mouth of the prophet, that he has given to that people 
commandments which are not good : probably, if we may ven- 
ture the thought, not pronouncing them bad, but only not good ; 
that is, not such as that men could be made good by them, or 
would become not good without them. 

I say, therefore, that circumcision, and other such thinos, 
were divinely ordained, in the prior dispensation, as a signifi- 
cation of the future, to be perfected by Christ Jesus ; upon 
the coming of which future, those things remained still in the 
sacred record, to be perused and studied for the understanding 
of prophecy, but not necessary to be performed, as if we were 
still expecting the coming of the things so signified. These 
things were therefore, it is true, not to be made obligatory 
upon the Gentile world ; and yet were they not to be so inter- 
dicted to the Jews as things to be held in abhorrence, and 
utterly condemned. They were intended gradually to disap- 



660 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

pear before the fervent preaching of the grace of Christ, by 
which alone believers could be made to discern that they 
could not be justified or saved by these shadows, prefiguring 
events then future, but since arrived and present, so that in 
the calling of the Jews themselves, after our Lord came in the 
flesh, and the apostolic commission began, the use of these 
things were visibly superseded. Still, when we reflect how 
they formerly stood, commended by their import and signifi- 
cation, we must consider them not as things detestable, and 
to be shunned as we would an idolatrous practice; while to 
insist upon the observance of them would be wrong, lest they 
might come to be regarded as necessary to salvation. This 
some heretics have thought, who, while they have affected to 
be both Jews and Christians, have become neither Jews nor 
Christians ; against whose opinions you have condescended 
very kindly to caution me, though I have never been in any 
danger of adopting them : but whose error Peter did feign, out 
of fear, to adopt, so that Paul with truth might affirm that he 
walked not rightly according to the truth of the Gospel. 
Paul did not so do; he only observed the old usages upon 
occasion, so far as to shew that they were not positively to be 
condemned : at the same time declaring that the faithful were 
saved, not by these, but by the faith that cometh of grace ; 
lest any might suppose him to mean that these observances 
were necessary. And in this view it is, and under these 
modifications, that I am of opinion that the Apostle Paul did 
the things above alluded to, not with a simulating but sincere 
intention : and as to myself, I neither call upon, nor, indeed, 
allow any Jewish convert to Christianity seriously and sin- 
cerely to practise these ceremonies any more than you, who 
suppose Paul in these instances to have performed them 
deceptiously. 

Am I to understand the sum of all your reasonings on this 
point to be no other than this — that after the Gospel of Christ 
was revealed, the believing Jews, in offering the sacrifices 
which Paul offered, in circumcising their children, in observing 
their sabbaths, provided they did these things pretendingly 
and deceptiously, did not act blameably ? If this be so, we 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 661 

are lapsing not into the error of the Ebionites, 72 or of those 
whom they commonly call Nazarenes, or any ancient heresy, 
but into I know not what new and strange opinion. But if 
you answer, to clear yourself from this imputation, that the 
Apostles were at that time to be commended for their pretended 
adoption of the ancient ceremonies, to avoid offending many 
of the believing Jews, who were yet weak in the faith, and did 
not understand that these ceremonies were to be wholly laid 
aside ; but now, that the doctrine of the grace of Christ is 
received among so many nations that were once heathen, and 
confirmed among all the churches of Christ by the reading of 
the law and the prophets, which are to be perused for edifi- 
cation, and not revived in actual observances, it could answer 
no useful end, but would be downright madness to feign to 
adopt them ; why may I not be allowed to say that the 
Apostle Paul, and other Christians of correct and pure faith, 
ought to be commended for having sincerely observed those 
ceremonies of the Jews, which were of prophetic significancy, 
and kept with so much reverence by their most pious ances- 
tors, that they might not at once be cast off by their posterity 
as impious and diabolical. It is true, that when these usages, 
the faith which was prenunciated by them being fully disclosed 
by the death and resurrection of the Lord, had lost their official 
vitality, they were properly to be considered as defunct, and 
calling only for decent burial, yet it was right that that burial 
should be marked by a real and not a pretended respect — nor 
was the carcase on a sudden to be abandoned to hostile con- 
tempt, and thrown, as it were, to the dogs. While, on the 
other hand, whosoever, even among the Jewish converts, should 
desire to celebrate those buried usages, by raking them from 
their ashes, would not be the performer of their funeral obse- 
quies, but an impious violator of the repose of the sepulchre. 73 

72 The Ebionites were a sect of the Hebrew converts, who circumcised, and 
retained the Jewish laws and customs, among their other heresies- Irenaeus, 
lib. i. c. 26. Tertull. De Praescr. Hseret. c. 33. 

73 These views and reasonings of Augustin are beautifully and luminously 
expressed. They called, however, perhaps for something more from this great 
and good man on the side of caution, as it did appear that even in the fourth 
century, and within his own experience and observation, the Jewish ceremonies 



662 FROM THE TIME OF LI BANT US 

I do confess that in writing to you concerning Paul's cele- 
bration of the Jewish ceremonies, when he was an apostle of 
Christ, in order to satisfy those who were attached to the insti- 
tutions, which they had received from their fathers, that they 
were not in themselves pernicious, I did not explicitly enough 
make it appear that my observation was bounded to the time 
when the gospel was first revealed. At that juncture, an ad- 
herence to the old national usages had nothing in it of a des- 
tructive effect, but in progress of time bad consequences might 
ensue, unless all Christians should agree in abandoning them, 
lest by degrees the distinction should be lost between what 
Moses taught his peculiar people, and the rites observed in the 
temples of the false deities under the influence of the evil spirit. 
I am really more to be blamed for my negligence in this in- 
stance, than you for the harshness of your censure. But still 
let it be considered that long before I had received your letters, 
when I was writing against Faustus theManichean, I explained 
myself, though somewhat briefly, on this subject ; and you 
might, methinks, if you had deigned so to do, have consulted 
that explanation, or have learned from them by whom I sent 
my letter to you, in what manner I had declared myself to 
them on this point. I expect from your benevolence and can- 
dour that you will believe me, when in the presence of God I 

had more general attraction than was consistent with the purity of Christian 
worship. The synagogues at Antioch, especially, made a great display of 
specious sanctity ; and the pretence of curing diseases of body and mind by 
exorcisms, charms, amulets, and other mystic symbols, had so powerful an 
influence on weak and unsettled minds, that many of the converts to Christi- 
anity were almost seduced by them into a fatal apostasy. If the dread of 
punishment by the laws of the empire restrained them from going so far, these 
restraints did not prevent their adopting a middle course, in which an union 
was endeavoured to be effected between the Christian and Jewish ceremonies. 
It was among the good works of Chrysostom, while presbyter at Antioch, to 
reprobate and resist a state of things so injurious to the cause of our holy 
religion. The same pious and energetic father, in his Horn, on Tit. iii. exposes 
certain then existing customs of the Jews, in which may be discovered the 
traces of their theosophic, magical, and cabbalistic juggles. 

See what is said of the Hebrew Christians in the beginning of the second 
book of Origen against Celsus. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 663 

assure you, that it never was my opinion that even the Jewish 
converts ought at this time, with any intention or meaning what- 
ever, to continue the observance of their ancient ceremonies : 
while with respect to Paul himself, I ever thought the same 
since the study of his epistles have been familiar to me; and 
I presume you would not think that, at this time, it could be 
allowable in any one to feign the observance of those Jewish 
rites, though you suppose the apostle so to have acted. 

Furthermore as you say, and declare with a loud voice, 
though the whole world should oppose you, that the ceremo- 
nies of the Jews are pernicious, and of fatal consequence to 
Christians ; and that whosoever, be he Jewish or Gentile con- 
vert, shall observe them, is fallen into the abyss of Satan's 
kingdom ; to the same opinion I do entirely assent; and further 
say, that whosoever shall observe these ceremonies, whether he 
be of Jewish or Gentile origin, not only truly, but in pretence, 
is fallen into the said abyss : and what more will you require 
of me. But as you admit that the simulation practised by the 
apostles, at the first preaching of the new faith, could not be 
allowable at the present time, so do I make a similar distinction 
between the two periods as to the justifiableness of Paul's 
sincere observance of the same ceremonies; deeming the same 
practice to deserve commendation at the one time, and repro- 
bation at the other. So, although we read that the law and 
the prophets were until John the Baptist ; and that therefore 
the Jews sought to put Christ to death, because he had not 
only broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his 
Father, making himself equal with God, — that we have re- 
ceived grace for grace, — that the law was given by Moses, 
but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ; — and through 
Jeremiah the promise was given that God would make a new 
covenant with the house of Judah, not according to the cove- 
nant which he made with their fathers ; nevertheless I do not 
imagine that the Lord himself was fallaciously circumcised by 
his parents; and if we say that on account of his infancy he 
did not prevent it ; still I cannot suppose that our Lord said 
fallaciously to the leper, whom certainly not the ceremony 



664 



FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 



commanded by Moses, but He himself had cleansed, "Go, 
and offer for thyself the sacrifice which Moses commanded for 
a testimony to them;" nor did he deceptiously go up to the 
feast; and that too so far from the ostentation of doing it 
before men, that he did not go openly, but privately. Again, 
the same apostle Paul said, "Behold I Paul say unto you, that 
if ye be circumcised, Christ is become of no effect unto you." 
Did he impose then upon Timothy, and cause Christ to be 
of no effect unto him ? or will you say that, because he did it 
deceptively, it produced no such consequence? this certainly 
was not so stated by Paul; who, without any respect to the 
intention with which it was done, whether for a real or decep- 
tious purpose, said simply, " If ye be circumcised, Christ shall 
profit you nothing." If you wish us to think that Paul should 
be understood to mean, if ye be circumcised, unless it be done 
simulatively and deceptiously, then I think I may without 
hesitation, require of you to allow me to understand Paul to 
have intended to convey the following meaning : " If ye be 
circumcised, having done the same as thinking that otherwise 
ye could not be saved, whoever has received this rite with 
such hope or intention, Christ hath profited him nothing." As 
he plainly said in another place : " For if righteousness come 
by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." He then announces 
what you have yourself reminded me of, "Christ is become of 
no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, 
ye are fallen from grace." The apostle's design was to show 
them to be in error who imagined that they could find their 
justification in the law, not those who then kept up the observ- 
ance of those legal ceremonies in honour of him by whom they 
were first ordained, well understanding the purpose for which 
they were instituted, — that of setting forth in types and figures 
truths afterwards to be revealed — and how long the mainte- 
nance of them could be permitted. 

Consistently with this distinction, he says in another place, 
" If ye are led of the spirit, ye are not under the law." Now 
what is the being under the law to which the apostle affixes 
blame, is the great question in my judgment : for he does not 
seem to me to mean that those were, in an ill sense, under the 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 665 

law, who merely observed the rite of circumcision, and other 
such outward rites which were practised by the Jews of old, 
but abandoned by the Christians, but who merited the censures 
of the moral law by not obeying its injunctions. The law says, 
thou shalt not covet : and this, we must admit, Christians are 
bound equally to observe, as it is confirmed and illustrated in 
the fullest manner by the gospel : which says, "the law is holy, 
and the commandment is holy, and just, and good.'*' And im- 
mediately subjoins, " Was then that which is good, made 
death unto me? God forbid ! but sin, that it might appear sin, 
working death in me by that which is good, that sin by the 
commandment might become exceeding sinful," Iva yevYirat 
KaO' v7repf5o\r}v afiapru)\og 17 a/uaprta <$ia tk]q evro\r)g. And to 
the same effect, he in another place says, " Moreover the law 
entered that the offence might abound ; but where sin abounded 
grace did much more abound." And in another place, having 
before spoken of the dispensation of grace, and of its justifying 
efficacy, he proceeds in the way of interrogation : " Wherefore, 
then, serveth the law ?" It was added, because of transgression, 
till the seed should come to whom the promise was made. 
Those, therefore, he says, are under the law, whom the law 
pronounces guilty, as not satisfying its requirements, while 
from not understanding the benefit of grace, as aiding our in- 
firmity in obeying the commandments of God, they presume 
upon their own strength with a proud confidence in them- 
selves. The fulfilment of the law is love. But the love of God 
is spread abroad in our hearts, not by ourselves, but by the 
Holy Spirit which is given to us. But to treat this subject 
with sufficient fulness, would be fitter for a volume than a 
letter. If the precept of the law — thou shalt not covet, — with- 
out the assistance of divine grace, holds a transgressor in his 
guilt, and gives him rather condemnation than deliverance ; 
in as much as no power to obey is coupled with the command, 
how much less can we expect from circumcision, and other 
such outward signs, which were of necessity to be abolished, 
as grace came to be more fully revealed, the power of justifi- 
cation. These outward ceremonies, however, were not things 
to be shunned like the impious rites of the heathen world, even 



666 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

when grace itself began to be revealed, since the revelation of 
grace was prefigured in these adumbrations ; but were to be 
permitted for a while, to those who drew their origin from the 
people to whom they were given. They were afterwards, as 
it were, buried with honour, never more to be brought into 
practice by Christians. 

But when you say that " these Jewish customs were not so 
to be laid aside, as never to be used as a means or instrument 
(dispensative), as was the opinion of our ancestors," what this 
notion implies, have the goodness to inform me: for either 
this is what I call qfficiosum mendacium, an official falsehood, 
(this dispensatio being the office or duty of honestly falsify- 
ing,) or something of which I perceive not the nature or 
meaning, unless, by the addition of some quality implied in 
the term dispensatio, a lie is changed in its essence and cha- 
racter. But if such an account of the matter be absurd, why 
do you then not at once say out plainly, that an official lie 
may be defended ? unless, indeed, you are troubled about the 
name, inasmuch as the term officium does not appear to be 
made use of in ecclesiastical books ; which, however, our 
honoured Ambrose was not afraid to use, who entitled some of 
his books abounding in useful precepts, " De Officiis." Is it 
your opinion that it is culpable to lie officiose, but commend- 
able to do the same dispensative ? Is it sometimes the part of 
a good man, and even of a Christian man, to deal in false- 
hood ? to whom it hath been said, " Let your communication 
be yea, yea; nay, nay: that ye fall not into condemnation;" 
and who hear from an authority to which they trust, " Thou 
shalt destroy all them that speak falsely. 74 

Doubtless the Apostle Paul, as a faithful dispenser of the 
Gospel, brings before us nothing but truth and certainty in 
his writings; and agreeably to this character, and this stew- 
ardship, he truly wrote that he saw Peter walking not rightly 
according to the truth of the Gospel, and he resisted him to 
his face. Peter truly received what Paul said for his correc- 

74 These noble remarks of Augustin conveyed much wholesome and needful 
instruction to Jerom, and (with reverence be it said) it gave a useful lesson to 
the fathers of the fourth century. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 667 

tion, and with the freedom which is the privilege of charity, 
with a benignant and humble piety ; and thus afforded a rarer 
and holier example to posterity not to disdain, if at any time 
they deviate from the path of rectitude, the rebuke of those 
who are below them in age and standing, than Paul, from 
whose example we learn that the younger is warranted, when 
Gospel truth is to be maintained, in resisting an elder, without 
an infringement of brotherly love. For although an uniform 
perseverance in an upright course makes the completer cha- 
racter, yet, as a single act of virtue, there is something more 
admirable and laudable in receiving correction with humility, 
than in reproving misconduct with boldness. While, there- 
fore, we respect the righteous freedom of Paul, let not the 
sanctified submission of Peter be without the admiration it 
deserves. And this, in my humble judgment, was a much 
safer ground of defence against the calumnies of Porphyry, 
than to give an interpretation of the transaction alluded to 
between Paul and Peter that would improve his opportunity 
of malignantly charging the Christians with falsehood in writing 
their epistles, and in handling the divine ordinances. You 
ask of me, in terms of challenge, to mention some one autho- 
rity, at least, for my opinion, since you have named so many 
who have preceded you in your exposition of the subject; 
requesting me, if I find you in error, to bear with you for the 
sake of those who are associated with you in that error. With 
those writers I must confess my entire unacquaintance; and of 
four of them, the total being about six or seven, you yourself 
have greatly lowered the authority. That Laodicean, whose 
name you do not give, you say has lately abandoned the church : 
Alexander you admit to have been an old heretic : Origen and 
Didymus I have found severely taken to task in your more 
recent works, and that too upon questions of no ordinary 
weight and importance ; though, indeed, this same Origen had 
before been the theme of your admiration and praise. 75 But I 

75 This versatility of Jerom arose from that dangerous maxim adopted by 
some of the great divines of the fourth century, of using any authorities, and 
sometimes citing them incompletely, for the purposes of their present argument. 
Augustin was superior to the use of any such expedients. 



668 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANJUS 

much question whether, even in such company, you would 
willingly be in error; and, indeed, I rather infer, from your 
mode of expressing yourself, that you do not really think the 
persons alluded to were really in error. For who is there that 
would choose to be associated with any one in his mistakes ? 

Three only remain to you, Eusebius, Emisenus, Theodorus 
Heracleotes, and he whom a little afterwards is mentioned by 
you, John, 76 who lately ruled the church in the Archiepiscopal 
chair of Constantinople. 

Moreover, if you inquire what were the sentiments of our 
Ambrose on this head, or of our Cyprian, you will perhaps 
discover that there has not been wanting to us those by whose 
authority we are countenanced : although, as I have already 
stated, I acknowledge an unqualified subjection only to the 
canonical scriptures, 77 of which I feel assured that they are 
chargeable with no error in opinion or statement. But should 
I look for some third person on my side, that I may meet your 
three with three of my own, one is at hand, — the apostle Paul. 
To him I betake myself from all who maintain another opinion; 
to him I make my appeal, resting upon what he tells us in his 
epistle to the Galatians, that he saw Peter walking not rightly 
according to the truth of the gospel, and that he withstood 
him to the face, because he compelled the Gentiles to live as 
did the Jews. Whether he wrote what was true, or lied after 
some unintelligible mode of official falsehood, others must de- 
termine. A little above, indeed, I hear him in the preface to 
his narrative, speaking thus in a solemn voice, "What I write 
unto you, behold, before God, I lie not." Let those who differ 
from me on this point, pardon me if I say I give greater credit 
to so great an apostle making this solemn adjuration in, and in 
behalf of, his own letters, than to what the most learned dis- 
putant may say concerning letters not his own. Nor do I re- 
gard the imputation of defending Paul, not as putting on the 
appearance of being, but as being actually in error. He neither 
affected to be in error, but used his liberty as an apostle, when 

76 Chrysostom. 

77 St. Augustin was constant in this sound opinion. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 669 

the time seemed to require it, giving a temporary countenance 
to usages originally set on foot by the providence of God for 
shadowing forth future dispensations ; nor was he really in the 
error of the Jews; but on the contrary, not only knew, but 
earnestly and vehemently maintained that they egregiously 
erred who pressed those observances upon the Gentile converts, 
or treated them as necessary to the justification of the faithful. 
And when I remarked, that he became a Jew to the Jews, 
and a Gentile to the Gentile converts, not for the purpose of 
imposing upon either, but out of a tolerating sympathy ; you 
seem, as I have already said, not to pay due attention to my 
meaning, or, it might be, I did not express my meaning with 
sufficient perspicuity. I did not say that Paul had pretended 
an adherence to the practices of the Jews, out of a feeling for 
their prejudices, but that he did not dissemble in his confor- 
mity to the usages of the Jews, any more than in his similar 
conduct towards the Gentiles. For when I asked you why, 
if his becoming a Jew to the Jews consisted in his deceptiously 
adopting Jewish customs, he did not practise the same dissimu- 
lation in respect to the customs of the Gentiles, you answered 
that his being a Gentile to the Gentiles, consisted in his de- 
nying the necessity of circumcision, and the distinctions res- 
pecting aliments, maintained by the Jews. I would ask whether 
this accommodation in favour of the Gentiles, was also matter of 
dissimulation ? which if it would be absurd to suppose, so also 
would it be absurd to suppose that the liberty allowed to the 
Jewish ceremonies was the result either of a servile necessity, 
or what would be of a far less worthy character, of a deceitful 
policy. To the pure in heart, and to those who know the truth, 
as he himself testifies, unless in this also he dissembles, every 
creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected ; but to 
be received with thanksgiving. Why then must Paul be de- 
ceptious in being a Jew to Jews, and sincere in being a Gen- 
tile to Gentiles? why to the wild olive grafted in, was he true 
and sincere in his ministry, while to the natural branches he 
must needs have thrown over his teaching the mantle of dis- 
simulation ? why as a Gentile to Gentiles, does he teach what 



670 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

he thinks, and think what he says ; and as a Jew to Jews, 
harbour one thing in his heart, and utter another in his words, 
acts, and writings ? To both classes of persons he owed the 
same charity, out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and a 
faith unfeigned. And so was he made all things to all men, 
that he might gain some, not by fraud, but by the leading of 
affection : not by consenting deceitfully to all the evil practices 
of men; but by adopting the weaknesses of others, as if they 
were his own, and by the balm of kindness, healing the infirmi- 
ties of those whose attention he had thus bespoken. 

When, therefore, the Apostle allowed himself to perform 
the ceremonies of the Old Testament, as if they were imperative 
upon him, he did not out of kindness practise a deception, 
but, having respect to ceremonies commanded by the Lord 
God to be observed for a limited period, he distinguished be- 
tween them and the sacrilegious usages of the Gentiles. He 
became a Jew to Jews, to extricate them from the error of trust- 
ing rather to a supposed saving effect of the ancient ceremonies 
and observances of the law, than to Christ, their true de- 
liverer; himself adopting their ceremonies, and putting him- 
self in the same state of exposure to error ; manifesting by 
such conduct, a love to his neighbour equal to his love of 
himself, and his obedience to the monition to do unto others 
as we would that others should do unto us ; which precept our 
Lord declared to be at once the law and the prophets. 

This compassionate sympathy is manifested by the Apostle 
in his epistle to the Galatians, " If a man be overtaken in 
a fault, ye, which are spiritual, restore such an one in the 
spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be 
tempted." As if he had said, put yourself on a footing with 
him, that you may win him : not, indeed, by committing the 
same fault, or feigning to be guilty of the same, but dealing 
with the delinquent as not forgetting how we ourselves may 
be overtaken, and by treating another with the same consi- 
deration and forbearance which we should look for under simi- 
lar circumstances ; that is, not by feigning what was really not 
felt, but by acting with the sympathy which is due from one 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 671 

infirm being to another. So, whether to Jew, or Gentile, or 
to any other fellow creature, convicted of crime or error, not 
feigning to be what he really was not, but knowing himself to 
be a man, with his liabilities to error, Paul became all things 
to all men, that he might gain some. 

I beseech you, be pleased to look into yourself, nay, I would 
say, into yourself in your relation to myself; and recollect, or, if 
you have still in writing the words used by you in that letter 
which you sent by the hand of our brother, and now my 
colleague, Cyprian, let them remind you with what true, 
sincere, and overflowing affection, after gravely expostulating 
with me on a matter in which you thought yourself unjustly 
treated, you used these words, " In this our friendship is 
wounded ; in this the rights of the close relation we have 
maintained to each other are violated ; that we appear to the 
world to be carrying on a puerile dispute, and to be supplying 
matter of contention for our respective partisans." These 
words were not only, I well know, the genuine dictates of the 
mind, but of a mind consulting most benevolently the feelings 
of him to whom they were addressed. You then add, what, 
indeed, had you been silent upon it, would have been suffi- 
ciently apparent, " These things I write, because I desire to 
love you with a true Christian affection, nor to reserve in my 
bosom any thing to which I give not utterance." O holy and 
reverend man, and (as God knows, who sees my soul) loved 
by me with a true heart, that which you have thus set forth 
in your letter, and which I doubt not has exhibited you to me 
such as you really are, is that which the Apostle Paul hath 
also set forth in his letter, not to any one man, but to the 
Jews and Greeks, and to all the Gentiles begotten by him 
in the Gospel, and with whom he was still in travail, and 
to all the succeeding thousands of faithful Christians, to 
whom that epistle was to carry his memory — that nothing 
was retained in his bosom contrary to that which passed his 
lips. As he was made all things to all men, so you have made 
yourself the same with me, not deceptively, but by a true 
feeling of sympathy ; when, thinking me in fault, you have 



672 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

determined not to abandon me to my error, but have acted 
towards me as you would have wished me to have done towards 
yourself, in similar circumstances. Full of thanks to you for 
these benevolent sentiments towards me, I venture at the same 
time to beseech you not to take it amiss, if, when some 
remarks occur to me on passages in your smaller works, I 
make them known to you ; being desirous that all persons 
would use the same freedom with me, which I have main- 
tained towards you ; that whatever they deem reprehensible in 
my writings, they would not bestow upon it an insidious 
praise, nor make it the subject of their censure before others, 
without communicating it to me; since, by such conduct, I 
do indeed think that friendship is wounded, and the rights of 
a close relation violated. I know not whether those can be 
reckoned among Christian friendships in which is evidenced 
the vulgar proverb, ' Flattery begets friends, and truth engen- 
ders hate,' rather than the maxim of the church, " Faithful 
are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are 
deceitful." And truly my opinion is, that we should do well 
to impress most earnestly upon our dearest friends, and those 
most disposed to look with partiality upon our labours, that 
fault may be found by one of the other without any diminution 
of mutual regard ; and that it is not the natural effect of 
truth, which is really the debt of friendship, to promote 
discord, whether it be truth contained in the contradiction 
itself, or in the motives and convictions of the person from 
whom the contradiction comes, so long as his heart and lips 
are in accordance. I hope, therefore, our brothers, who are 
of your familiar acquaintance, will believe that it happened 
against my will, and, indeed, to my no small vexation, that 
my letter found its way into the hands of many persons before 
it reached you, to whom it was addressed. How that hap- 
pened it would be long to explain, and as I conceive unneces- 
sary, since it ought to suffice, if I am to be credited, that it 
did not happen with the intention imputed, nor with my will, 
consent, or privity. If that which I say, the truth whereof I 
call God to witness, is not believed, I know not what I can 
more do. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 673 

Far be it from my mind to suspect that the persons alluded 
to have, out of any malevolence towards me, intimated to you 
any such suspicions to my prejudice, with a view to stir up 
strife between us, which may the mercy of the Lord our God 
avert from us ; but, without imputing to any the design to in- 
jure me, I cannot but be aware how prone we are to suspicion, 
from a consciousness of our own infirmity. It is but just that 
I should think this of them, if indeed they are vessels of Christ, 
made for honour, and appointed by God for a good purpose in 
a great house. But if, after this my solemn assertion, and 
their knowledge of it, they will persevere in their injurious 
surmises concerning me, how wrongly they act you are my 
witness. When I said that I had not sent any book to Rome, 
written against you, I meant, in the first place, to distinguish 
what is properly a book from a letter, about which I had 
reason to think you had received some, I know not what, wrong 
impression; neither had I sent that epistle to Rome, but to 
you ; and as to its being written against you, I could not 
regard it in that light, as I was conscious of having written it 
from motives of the sincerest friendship, for your or rather for 
our mutual admonition and correction. Putting aside, then, 
those by whom you are surrounded, I beseech you, by the 
grace by which we have been redeemed, that, in those in- 
stances in which I have made mention in my letter of those 
high qualities with which it has pleased God to endow you, I 
may not be suspected of an insidious flattery. But if, in any 
respect, I have given you offence, forgive me. And I beg you 
will not take, in a larger sense than it was meant, something 
which from one, I forget which, of the poets, rather absurdly, 
perhaps, than with scholar-like correctness, I cited in allusion 
to you ; especially as, you will remember, I immediately sub- 
joined, that I did not mean to imply by it a wish that you 
might recover the eyes of your understanding, but that you 
would direct to the object, in relation to which the passage 
was quoted, those sound and correct eyes which happily be- 
longed to you. The allusion to Stesichorus was made by me, 
not in reference to his blindness, which I neither attributed to 

x x 



674 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

you, nor apprehended in your case, but in imitation of his 
palinode, or recantation, if I had written anything which I 
ought to have cancelled in a subsequent writing. And I beg 
that, from time to time, you will correct me without reserve 
when you shall perceive an occasion for so doing: for though, 
according to the import of words expressive of rank and dignity 
in the Church, settled by ecclesiastical usage, the title of 
Bishop is superior to that of Presbyter, nevertheless, in nu- 
merous particulars, Augustin must take a lower grade than 
Jerom ; and yet correction even from an inferior, is not to be 
refused and disdained. 

With respect to your translation, you have convinced me of 
the benefit to be derived from a translation of the Scriptures 
from the Hebrew, that you may bring before us what the Jews 
have pretermitted or corrupted. But I request to be informed 
by what Jews you consider this to have been done ; — whether 
by those who translated the Scriptures before the coming of our 
Lord, and if so, by whom in particular? or by those who, after 
our Lord's advent, might be suspected on that account to have 
subtracted some things from the Greek copies, or of having 
corrupted them, to avoid being convicted by their testimony : 
a motive by which I do not see bow those who lived anterior 
to our Lord's appearance on earth could have been actuated. 
I pray you, send me your translation from the Septuagint, 
which I was not aware you had yet given to the world. The 
book also of which you make mention, touching the best 
method of translating, I am desirous of reading; and hope to 
learn from it how a translator's skill in languages may keep 
pace with the conjectures of the critics in sacred literature, 
who, with the most harmonious agreement in faith and doc- 
trine, must, in the obscurity which so frequently meets them 
in the pages of Scripture, be perpetually generating new opi- 
nions, although this variety may not affect the substance of 
our belief and trust. And, indeed, the same commentator, 
with an unvarying faith, may, at different times, expound the 
same text differently, as his impressions may alter of the sense 
of an obscure passage. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 675 

Bat my prevailing reason for wishing for your Latin trans- 
lation of the Greek Septuagint was, my anxiety to preclude 
the interference of the presumptuous ignorance of others, too 
promptly disposed to the same undertaking. Let those who 
suspect me of envying your useful labours, if possible, be made 
to understand that my objection to the reading of your trans- 
lation from the Hebrew in our churches, arises from the 
reluctance I feel to disturb the Christian community by reflec- 
tions cast upon the authority of the Septuagint, to which their 
ears and understandings have been so long accustomed, and 
to which the Apostles have given their sanction. With the 
same feeling of reluctance to disturb settled impressions, I 
would rather read that shrub mentioned in Jonah as it is in- 
terpreted by the Seventy — a gourd, than understand it accord- 
ing to the Hebrew text, neither as ivy nor a gourd, but as 
something else, I know not what, which, dependant on its own 
stem, rises erect without prop or support. I cannot think the 
Seventy would have adopted the name of gourd, unless they 
had known that something similar to this was meant in the 
original. 

And now, I think, I have written enough, and more than 
enough, in answer to your three letters, with two of which I 
was favoured by Cyprian, and one by Firmus. Write again 
whatever you think will be instructive to myself or others. I 
will, in future, use greater care that the letters which I write 
to you, may be delivered to you, before they are put into any 
hands by which they may be liable to be spread abroad : for I 
confess that I should not wish that mine to you, should be so 
dealt with, any more than yours to me, of which, with the 
greatest reason, you complain of the dispersion. I trust that 
mutual kindness, as well as the liberty which belongs to friend- 
ship, will induce us both, without reserve, to impart to each 
other whatever may occur to us concerning our respective 
letters, and that with such a disposition of mind as may, in 
the commerce of friendship, be not displeasing to God. But 
if you think that this cannot be done without the danger of 
exciting feelings destructive of our mutual affection, let it not 



676 



FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 



be done. The love subsisting between us is greater than to 
be subject to this peril • but if it must be less than this, yet 
surely that less degree of love is better than no love at all. 



It has been thought desirable to include, within the limits 
of this work, some of the most interesting epistles of the 
fathers of the Christian church living in the fourth and fifth 
centuries, since in this last stage of ancient literature, all that 
could qualify for elegant letter- writing had gone over, with 
the remains of scholarship, to the ecclesiastical body. The 
letters of Symmachus and Ausonius might, indeed, have been 
greatly multiplied ; but it will probably appear, to those who 
value letters as the carriers in the commerce of intelligence 
between mind and mind, that the production of a few of these 
specimens was enough to satisfy literary curiosity. They are, 
however, to this limited extent, extremely interesting, as bear- 
ing upon them the impress of a period of transition, when 
society and manners were undergoing a great transformation, 
and the vast structure, cemented by the habits of centuries, 
established on prescription and antiquity, and having all the 
prejudices and propensities of nature for its buttresses and 
supports, was in a rapid course of dilapidation and dispersion. 
The fourth and fifth centuries belong especially to the history 
of the Church. No correspondence by letters could be looked 
for, in a period so convulsed and barbarous, having reference 
to any permanent interests except those connected with the 
state and progress of religion. All else was fluctuating with 
the changes and chances of physical force, amidst ignorance 
of political rights and moral duties. Making due allowance 
for the nearness with which revolutionary events are brought 
to each other in the distant scenery which history presents to 
us, all testimony does so conspire to prove the degenerate 
condition of morality and intelligence in this last chapter of 
Roman greatness, that we cannot doubt of the deteriority into 
which all things belonging to mind and its energies had col- 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 677 

lapsed. The momentum of the empire seemed to be tending 
downwards by a sort of gravitation ; and it would be difficult 
to shew what it specifically was that thus irresistibly urged it 
onward in this fatal direction, with a system of laws matured 
by antiquity and experience, and a new dispensation so calcu- 
lated to elevate and correct the intercourse of life. 

In the moral as in the natural economy, the hand of Provi- 
dence works imperceptibly and mysteriously ; and one is ready 
sometimes to think that, as the great Disposer has given to 
the material frame of the individual man, first a tendency to 
grow to perfection, and then a contrary tendency to decay and 
dissolve, the turning-point being in His invisible hand; so he 
may have set certain bounds to national increase ; thus giving 
to everything in this preparatory world the same flux and 
revolutionary character. The struggles of rising states may 
elicit the powers of the mind, but the commotions which 
agitate a nation's old age have no such effect. They kindle 
no flame, they awaken no dormant energies, they teem with 
no products of glory ; ungenerous strifes, and covetous conten- 
tion, is all they provoke or call into action ; and thus it was 
with antiquated Rome in the miserable years of its tardy 
declension. Its degradation had reached its lowest depression 
at the beginning of the fifth century ; and in that sunken and 
hopeless extremity, it lingered on to its final extinction in a. d. 
476, when the grasp of Odoacer put it out of its misery. 
During this interval the city was three times besieged, once 
sacked and pillaged by Alaric and his Goths, and once again 
by Genseric and his Vandals ; while all its fairest provinces 
were laid waste by Attila and his Huns. Imperial Rome 
no more looked down from her seven hills upon a trem- 
bling world. She slowly expired amidst the mockeries of her 
nominal majesty, the Goth being her real master; and if a 
gleam of her departed greatness was reflected in the person of 
Majorian, it was only to aggravate the gloom into which the 
eternal city was sinking. The Decii, the Fabii, the Africani, 
the Cornelii, had dwindled down to a Maximus, an Avitus, a 
Severus, an Anthemius, an Olybrius, a Glycerius, a Nepos, 



678 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

and an Augustulus. The staple of her destiny was reduced 
to its last thread in that concluding list of princes who followed 
her glory to its grave. 

In such a state of things, it was not to be expected that an 
intelligent, gay, or instructive correspondence by letters should 
be found to keep the charities or festivities of domestic life in 
exercise or play, or to carry on the pleasing commerce of 
literary intercourse. Everything belonging to mind must 
needs have been in a condition of great weakness. A sort of 
grey puerility, or what, in homely phrase, is called second 
childhood, was characteristic of all the literature of these 
times. The Roman language suffered much under this conta- 
gious dulness. It became stuffed with foreign and bombastical 
combinations, unidiomatic, anomalous, and impure. Being- 
used only as the organ of bad taste and poor conceptions, it 
lost, by degrees, its masculine and indigenous strength, and 
sunk to the level of the service in which it was employed. 

Caius Sollius Sidonius Apollinaris, a native of that part of 
Gaul through which the Rhone passes, called in ancient 
geography Gallia Lugdunensis, was a man of letters and 
some poetical talent ; and, having been the panegyrist of three 
Emperors, Avitus, Majorian, and Anthemius, in no measured 
terms of praise, he floated in safety and tranquillity along the 
turbid stream of those unsettled times. He became bishop of 
Arverne (now Auvergne), of which the episcopal city was 
Clermont; and, unlike Paulinus of Nola, who made poetry 
give place to his holy avocations, on his conversion to Chris- 
tianity, he is only known to posterity by his poetical and 
literary performances. He was but a frigid versifier, and in 
his epistles, which have come to us, he has distinguished him- 
self by bolder innovations in the use of language than most 
others of his time. 78 His encomium of the Emperor Anthemius 
was so acceptable to that prince, that the statue of the poet 
was placed, by his order, in the forum of Trajan, with a laurel 

78 In quibus, multa inveniat latinae linguae studiosus millo modo imitanda, 
verba audacter novata, aut insolenter deducta, phrasesque inconditas, et a 
latina gravitate longe abhorrentes. Flacc. Tot. Lat. in verb. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 679 

crown. The poetical priest was the son-in-law of Avitus, an 
interesting portion of whose private life had, according to the 
flattering testimony of Sidonius, been passed in studious repose 
at an estate which he possessed in the neighbourhood of Cler- 
mont. This summer residence appears to have been a retreat 
well adapted to the cultivated tastes of Avitus, who is repre- 
sented, at least before his elevation to the purple, to have had 
a great relish for rural sports, elegant reading, and the practice 
of husbandry. Avitus was drawn from his retirement by his 
appointment to the post of Master-General of the Cavalry, and 
Infantry of Gaul, in which character he successfully courted 
the favour and support of Theodoric, King of the Goths, at 
that juncture the arbiter of the fortunes of the empire, and 
residing with his court at Thoulouse. Thither Avitus repaired, 
and while he was forming a secret alliance with this powerful 
friend, the death of Maximus opened his way, with the assist- 
ance of Theodoric, to the throne of the Roman empire, to 
which he was, without resistance, advanced. On this change 
in the condition of Avitus, he left his rural sojourn, and Sido- 
donius, as the husband of his daughter Papianilla, appears to 
have become its possessor. With this villa he was extremely 
pleased. He called it Avitacum, after the name of his father- 
in-law, to whose care and cultivation it owed its attractions ; 
and it is thus that, after the manner, and probably in imitation, 
of the younger Pliny, he describes it to a friend. 

SIDONIUS TO HIS FRIEND DOMITIUS. 

You complain that I loiter in the country : but surely I have 
more reason to complain that you linger in town at this season. 
Now the spring is giving way to summer ; and the sun, as- 
cending through its higher steps, is travelling in its radiance 
towards the northern pole. What shall I report of our climate 
here, which has been stretched out by the Divine Artificer 
towards the west, the region of vapours. The world here has 
now begun to glow with summer heat. The mountains no 
more present their snowy tops ; and the surface of the plains 



680 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

is inscribed with curvatures and gaping fissures, caused by the 
heat. The beds of the rivers begin to show themselves ; their 
muddy banks appear ; the dust has taken place of the grass 
in the fields; and the brooks sleep in their channels. The 
water is not merely warm ; it boils. And now w 7 hile one is 
dissolved in woollen, and another in silk, you under your 
shaggy cloak banded about you, wedged into your official 
chair, are surrounded by your scholars, pallid no less from the 
heat, than from trepidation, while you commence your lectures 
to your gaping audience. But, my good friend, unless your 
taste is depraved, hurry away from the suffocating allies of 
the city, and accepting the hospitality now offered you, shun 
the influence of the dog-star, by repairing to this most agree- 
able retreat. But perhaps, you would wish to know to what 
sort of a place you are invited. Hear, then, my description of 
it. I am at Avitacum ; this is the name of my farm : which, 
because it is the name of my wife's family, is more agreeable 
to me than my own family name ; such is the harmony in which 
we live together 79 by the favour of providence, unless you sus- 
pect there is some witchery in it. On the western side, a 
mountain stands out to view, not piercing the clouds, but yet 
lofty. Jt seems to have engendered the smaller hills about it 
from the fiery contents of its two craters, and which cover a 
breadth of about four acres from its base. But while there is 
a sufficient area before the house, the sides of the hills are 
carried in straight declivities into the middle of the valley; 
quite to the verge of the dwelling house, which has its frontage 
turned towards the north and east. A spacious bath is on the 
southern side, lying at the base of a rocky eminence covered 
with a wood, so that when the trees are felled, the timber 
tumbles spontaneously into the mouth of the furnace, sup- 
plying charcoal for heating the bath ; the flues being placed 
in an apartment which is of about the same area with the 
chambers for perfuming and anointing, except that a semi- 



79 This good bishop was not more disposed to part with his wife in obedience 
to the discipline of the church, than Synesius, or Paulinus. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 681 

circular seat occupies a large portion of this latter room, 
through the walls of which, the boiling water is carried in 
leaden pipes, hissing, and, as it were, sobbing in its passage. 

This apartment is so shut up, that, although the light is 
fully admitted, there is hardly a consciousness of nudity, 
enough to excite an emotion of shame in minds the most deli- 
cate. Hence a door opens into the frigidarium, or cooling apart- 
ment, and the cold bath, which is a humble imitation of the 
baths constructed for the public use. It has its roof conically 
elevated to an apex, with its four sides shelving down in an 
imbricated fashion from its crest. The room assigned to this 
purpose is an exact square, so that, leaving space enough for 
the services of the attendants, it may hold the number of seats 
required for the accommodation of the visitors coming from the 
hot bath. 80 The builder has placed opposite each other two 
windows, at the terminations of the sloping roof, so that a view 
is afforded of the skilfully wrought ceiling. The cement of 
which the exterior of the walls is made, presents a smooth 
and shining surface. There are no paintings of figures repre- 
senting impure stories, which, whatever testimony they may 
bear to the power of the art, are a disgrace to the artist. Here 
are no buffooneries of dress or countenance, patched and co- 
loured like the wardrobe of the farce-writer Philistio. 81 Here 
are no wrestlers and boxers with their bent and twisted limbs, 
whose indecent contortions the corrective rod 82 of the master 



80 Tot possit recipere sellas Quot solii sigma personas. The sigma in this 
place does not signify a circular seat, as it generally does, but the semicircular 
shape of the floor of the hot bath, from which persons, who had been using it, 
came to the cold bath. The number of seats was accommodated to the number 
of the persons who had been in the hot bath. In balneis qui lavabant a cella 
caldaria, ej usque solio transibant ad frigid ariam, ibique in sellis considebant. 

81 Philistionis. Poetse mimographi yeXwroiroiov, ipso in risu mortui, ut 
refert Suidas. Euseb. in Chron. sub Tiberio. He was a mimic or bufToon, 
born in Magnesia, and a distinguished performer at Rome. 

82 Virga. j3aT(ov yvfivaaiapxog. It was a rod used by the managers of the 
combats and contests in the circus or stadium, for regulating and controlling 
the proceedings. More properly expressed by the Latin rudis, and the Greek 
patSog. 



682 FROM THE TIME OF LIB AN I US 

of the sports would put a stop to in real exhibitions. What 
more on this iiead need be added ? nothing will be found repre- 
sented on these walls unfit to meet the eye of purity. A few 
verses will arrest the casual reader, by no means of an improper 
character ; which to have read one would not regret, but which 
excite no wish for a re-perusal. 

If you inquire after marbles ; it is true that neither Paros, 
nor Carystos, nor Proconnesos, 83 nor the Phrigians, nor the 
Numidians, nor the Spartans, have furnished their variegated 
facings ; nor coloured with the dye of the genuine conchyliun, 
does the floor glitter with the marble dust; and yet without 
the coolness borrowed from foreign quarries, our humble cot- 
tages have in their own shade a sufficient protection from the 
summer heat. 

But listen, while I recount to you what we possess of com- 
fort, rather than the things in which we are deficient. To 
this, our mansion, a spacious piscina or pool, or if you prefer 
a Greek term, a baptisterium or bath, is annexed, containing 
about twenty thousand modii. To such as have been washed 
in the warm bath, a triple passage is afforded hither through 
the partition wall by a vaulted access, not merely piles of 
stones, 84 but columns being interposed, such as the architects 
regard as the stately ornaments of an edifice. 85 Six pipes, 
standing out with heads to imitate lions, pour the river, which 
comes down from the mountain's brow, by winding channels 
down its sides, into the basin or pool above mentioned ; which 
lions' heads present to those that come suddenly upon them 
the exact teeth of the animals, their furious aspects, and an 
imposing resemblance of their manes. In this place, the crowd 

83 TXpoicovvrjGOQ. An Island in the JEgean Sea, celebrated for its marble 
quarries. Strab 1. xiii. 

84 Mediae pilae. He is supposed to mean pillars composed of many stones 
made circular planes, and put one upon another. 

85 iEdificiorum purpuras — i. e. ornamenta. The word purple, by ancient 
writers, is sometimes used in the general sense of ornamental. — " Quos numeros 
cum quibus tanquam purpuram misceri oporteat. Cic in Orat. 'O 8s evdov oikoq 
KaXXi^og, <pu)Tog re koWov ava/xt^og, kcli <bg -rropcpvpa diyvGicrnevog. Lucian 
in Hipp. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 683 

of domestics or guests surrounding the master of the mansion, 
being prevented by the noise of the falling waters from making 
themselves heard by an ordinary exertion of the voice, apply 
their mouths close to each other's ears; and thus the mere 
common chit-chat has the ridiculous appearance of being com- 
municated as profound secrets. To those who are coming 
from the bath, the apartment belonging to the mistress of the 
mansion presents itself, in a line with the store-room or pantry, 
which is divided by a thin moveable partition from the chamber, 
wherein the works of embroidery and the loom are carried on. 
Towards the east, the portico looks upon the lake, which por- 
tico is supported by rounded piles, rather than with proud 
columns. From the vestibule, the long covered entrance lets 
the eye into the interior, uninterrupted by walls or partitions, 
which, as it looks upon nothing, although we must not call it 
a hypodrome, 86 has a full claim to be called a crypto-porticus, 
or covered way. This opening at its extremity into a corridore 
or open gallery, affords a refreshing coolness ; when the prepa- 
ration and covering of the sleeping couches is completed, then 
a most noisy chorus takes place among the nurses and female 
attendants, while I and my family proceed along the dormitory. 
From the covered way you pass to the winter apartment, dis- 
coloured by the smoke of the fire, in the arched chimney-place 
often excited by the application of the bellows. But why talk 
of this to you, as you are not now invited to make one, round 
a fire. Let us speak rather of what more appertains to you 
and the season. From this chamber we proceed to the dining 
and supping room, which opens entirely upon the lake, and 
from which, the lake is almost wholly seen. In this room there 

86 The hyprodromus is to be distinguished from the hippodromus ; which is 
a circus for chariot and horse- racing. The word is here, doubtless, borrowed 
from Pliny the younger, who uses it in the famous letter in which he describes 
his Coman villa, and which will be found among his letters in its place in this 
volume. The term is used to signify a sort of natural portico formed of the 
branches of trees and shrubs trained to meet. It was a place for walking and 
conversing in undisturbed. " Dant secessum vicina secreta, ubi dum erratici 
palmitum lapsus nexibus pendulis per arundines bajulas repunt, viteam porti- 
cum frondea tecta fecerunt." Cypr. Epist. ad Donatum. 



684 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

is a dining table, and a polished sideboard ; to the area or 
floor of which apartment there is a gradual ascent by broad 
and easy steps ; where, in the intervals of your repast, you 
may enjoy the prospect. If any thing is brought to you 
boiled in the water of this most noisy of fountains, you will see 
spread over the inner surface of your cups spots of snowy 
whiteness, and a greasy vapour obscuring their transparency 
as the liquor cools, which is almost immediately. The cold 
contents of these cups must not be swallowed at a draught by 
a thirsty man, though to you, who are so abstemious, such 
caution may not be necessary. 

Hence you may watch the fisherman launching his boat into 
the water, that he may spread out his nets on the surface, sus- 
pended by corks, or stretched out and fastened to fixed posts, 
at certain distances. It is amusing to see, on a nightly excur- 
sion on the lake, the rapacious trout ensnared by the little fish 
of their own kindred. What can be more fitting than that 
these greedy animals should be made to ensnare one another. 
The repast being over, the withdrawing-room receives us, 
which, being the coolest, is the fittest for summer ; for it admits 
a full light without heat, having a north aspect ; a very narrow 
slip being interposed, where couches are placed for light and 
refreshing slumbers. Here, how pleasantly sounds the chirrup 
of the grasshoppers, in full chorus in the noon-tide of summer; 
the frogs croaking as the evening advances ; the swans and 
geese proclaiming bed time with their shrill notes; the crowing 
cocks anticipating the morning light ; philomel whispering 
among the shrubs the approach of the dawn ; and the swallow 
chattering among the sparrows. To which harmony you may 
add the shepherd's pipe, with which the night-watching Tity- 
rus's of our mountains contend with each other, surrounded 
by their flocks, browsing on the greensward with their sounding 
bells ; all which various melodies of sound and song will bring 
on, with their soothing influence, a deep and refreshing sleep. 

If you take your walk towards the harbour, along the verdant 
lawn, you come to a public grove at no great distance, made by 
two large lime trees, forming one umbrageous canopy with their 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONrUS APOLLINAIUS. 685 

spreading but united branches, under whose shade, when my 
friend Ecdicius honours me with a visit, we amuse ourselves 
with the ball ; and this is continued till the sun, being at a 
greater height, confines the shade to the area between the trees, 
and then, too tired for the exercise of the pila, we go to the 
dice-board. 

So much for my house, which I have in description rebuilt 
for your entertainment ; but I must acquit myself as to the lake : 
so take the remainder. It is situated towards the east ; and 
when its waters are agitated and impelled by a strong wind, 
it almost washes the basement of the building; while its shores 
present such a morass with its alluvial mud, as to forbid a near 
approach. A bank of clay is thus formed round the lake, 
which presents a moving scene of gliding barks, when the 
weather permits these excursions. When the south wind 
blows, the waters become very rough ; and the leaves of the 
surrounding trees are scattered over the noisy surface, which 
is in extent about seventy stadia. A river finds its way into 
the lake, but at its place of entrance it is so tossed about by the 
rocky obstructions which it has to contend with, that it rushes 
forward frothy and foaming, till it is buried in the lake. 
Whether it was only an increment to the lake, or the source 
and origin of it, may be a question ; but it is certain that it 
passes through it, impelled along a channel at the bottom, to 
the advantage it may be, of the lake, but to the injury of the 
fish ; for the fish thrown back, and, as it were, imprisoned by 
the eddies, appear with those hues which indicate sickness : 
having neither regress nor egress, their bodies become gross, 
and serve as a sort of living and portable prison. The shore 
of the lake towards the right is indented, incurvated, and well 
timbered ; towards the left it is open, green, and level. The 
water has a deep green colour along the shore, to the south, 
caused by the overhanging boughs of trees, which stretch far 
over the surface of the lake, as the lake itself covers its gravelly 
bed, so the shade of the trees cover the water. The same 
colour is continued along the western rim. Towards the north, 
the appearance is what might be expected from its aspect. 



686 FROM THE TIME OF L1BANIUS 

Towards the west, a plebian sort of shrub, wild and scattered, 
grows along the shore ; bent down in many places by the 
weight of the little boats passing over it. Around this shrub, 
the pliant curls of the rushes are entwined, while the thick 
leaves of the sedge swim about; and the bitter quality of the 
grey willow is nourished by waters which are in themselves 
entirely sweet. 

In the middle of the lake there is a small island, where upon 
a rude pile of stones there stands out to view a goal or terminus, 
indented by the strokes of oars, and worn by the boats sailing 
close up to it and about it, where many a merry shipwreck 
takes place : for it was the custom there for our ancestors to 
imitate the Drepanitanian contest according to the Trojan 
superstition. 87 

Then the territory itself, though this should have been 
spoken of before, is abounding in wood, painted with flowery 
meads, with plenty of pasture for cattle, and many shepherds 
feeding their own flocks upon it. But I will delay you no 
longer, lest if I carry this description to a greater length, the 
autumn will come and find you still reading it. Be but quick 
in coming to me, you will not be in haste to leave me when 
you are once here ; and I am sure you will pardon me for 
having studied so little the brevity due to you in this uncon- 
scionably long epistle, which carries you to every hole and 
corner of this country residence of mine ; but which, long as 
it is, has left many things untouched, for fear of becoming 
tedious. Wherefore, I trust that a good judge, and wise reader 
will pronounce not the page which describes, but the villa 
which is described, to be a thing of magnitude. 



The above letter of Sidonius must be regarded as very 
curious, as far as it affords an insight into the domestic ar- 

85 Depranum, now Trapani, was a maritime town on the western coast of 
Sicily, near the promontory of Lilybaeum, where ./Eneas lost his father Anchises, 
to the memory of whom he celebrated funereal games. We are to understand 
the allusion to be to the Ludicra Naumachia. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 687 

rangements and habits of a period in history, with which 
we are very imperfectly acquainted. Of his manner of dis- 
posing of his time he gives us no intimations ; but as he was 
a man of literature, and poetry, he probably imitated the 
younger Pliny, as much in the economy of his time, as in 
the distribution of his house and grounds. The situation of 
this Villa of Sidonius has been always a very doubtful ques- 
tion. Some have supposed it to have stood on the banks of 
the lake of Chambon. And the Chateau de Varennes, now 
in ruins, has been thought, not on improbable grounds, to 
cover the spot where the Avitacum was once gay with the 
hospitality of Sidonius and the festivities of his friends. The 
scene from this commanding situation is represented as ex- 
tremely beautiful ; and seems to answer, in many respects, to 
the description given by Sidonius of his agreeable residence. 

The letter of Sidonius containing a description of the person 
and manners of Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, is curious 
and entertainino-. It is dated from the Court of Thoulouse, 
where Theodoric had fixed the seat of his government. It was 
written, as appears to Agricola, who we learn from the twelfth 
of his Epistles in the Second Book, was his wife's brother. 

SIDONIUS TO HIS FRIEND AGRICOLA, SENDS HEALTH. 

You have often asked me, since common report speaks so ad- 
vantageously of the character and manners of Theodoric, King 
of the Goths, to give you a letter descriptive of the man, in 
his person and in his mode of living. I willingly comply with 
your wishes as far as it can be done within the compass of a 
letter, while I cannot but commend the anxiety you feel on a 
subject of so much interest. For he is a man like ourselves, 
and worthy to be known and studied by those who have not 
the opportunity of an intercourse with him. The Providence 
of the great Disposer has associated in his person the gifts 
w 7 hich constitute complete felicity; — manners of such a stamp 
and character, notwithstanding his exalted situation, as to force 
envy itself to praise him. If you wish to know what his figure 



688 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

is, — he is exactly proportioned, above the middle size, and yet 
shorter than the very tall. The top of his head is well rounded, 
and the hair, somewhat retreating from his broad smooth fore- 
head, curls carelessly about the top. His eye-brows are arched 
and shaggy; and when he bends his brows his eye-lashes 
almost touch his cheeks. His ears, as the custom of his 
nation is, are covered with his hair. When he opens his 
mouth, his teeth attract your attention by their snowy white- 
ness. His nose has the finest curvature. His lips are thin 
and even. His beard grows high to his very temples, but 
from the lower part of his face the tonsor is constantly pluck- 
ing out the hairs. His chin, throat, and neck, are not fat, but 
full and fleshy. His fair complexion is often suffused with a 
juvenile redness, not from anger, but real modesty. His 
shoulders are well rounded off; his arm above the elbow 
stout, and below the elbow strong and sinewy, his hands large, 
his lower limbs are muscular and firmly set. 

If you desire to know how he daily demeans himself in 
public. Before break of day he attends the services of his 
chaplains with a very small retinue ; he is constant in his de- 
votions, though (let this be a secret between us) one may see 
that he carries himself thus devoutly rather from regard to 
custom and usage, than from sincere motives. The remainder 
of the morning he dedicates to the affairs of his government ; 
his armed attendant stands near his seat; and his troop of 
guards is admitted so near, as to be at hand ; but to avoid 
noise they are posted on the outside. They stand in the 
entrance hall or ante-chamber, and are not suffered to come 
within the curtains which conceal the council room. At 
these times the embassies from the nations are introduced. 
He listens much, answers sparingly. Matters which require 
further consideration he delays ; such as require dispatch, he 
expedites. About the second hour (eight o'clock) he rises 
from his throne, either to pass some time in inspecting his 
treasures, or his stables. If his intention to hunt is announced, 
he goes forth, a boy carrying his bow, for he deems it below 
the royal dignity to carry a bow at his side. If a bird or wild 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 689 

beast is pointed out to him, the boy places the bow in his 
hand which he puts behind to receive it unbent ; for he con- 
siders it to be childish to bear a quiver, and effeminate to re- 
ceive the bow ready bent for him. He then bends the bow, 
shoots at whatever you please, and is pretty sure of his aim. 
When he goes to his repast, which he takes as a private man 
on common days, no servant, panting under his load, places 
upon the table almost giving away to the pressure, the heaps 
of pale unpolished silver plate. The greatest weight is in the 
words uttered ; for here either nothing is related, or only 
what is worthy of attention. 

A furniture of embossed silver, and splendid tapestry, some- 
times dyed in purple, sometimes made of fine flax, is produced ; 
viands are preferred not for their costliness, but for their being 
skilfully prepared ; the service of dishes for their brightness, 
rather than their splendour : and the infrequent handing about 
of the cups and goblets, it would be easier for thirst to condemn, 
than for temperance to excuse. You may see at these enter- 
tainments Greek elegance, Gallic abundance, Italian alertness 
and precision, public pomp, private assiduity, and royal disci- 
pline. The luxury of his entertainments on festive days is 
too well known to need a description. After dinner Theodoric 
sometimes indulges himself in a short slumber, but often 
omits it ; and as soon as he wakes, he calls hastily for the 
dice and tables, encourages his friends to forget the royal 
majesty, 88 and is delighted when they freely express the feel- 
ings which are excited by the incidents of play. At this 
game, which he loves as the image of war, he alternately dis- 
plays his eagerness, his skill, his patience, and his cheerful 
temper. If he loses, he laughs ; he is modest and silent if he 
wins. Yet, notwithstanding this seeming indifference, his 
courtiers choose the moments of his victory as the best times 
for asking any favour; and I myself, in my applications to 
the King, have derived some benefit from my defeats, 89 

88 The writer is so tediously minute, that I have followed Mr. Gibbon in 
his free translation. 

89 Turn etiam ego aliquid obsecraturus feliciter vincor, et mihi tabula perit, 

Y Y 



690 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

About the ninth hour (three o'clock) the tide of business 
again returns, and flows incessantly till after sun-set, when 
the signal of the royal supper dismisses the weary crowd of 
suppliants and pleaders. At the supper, a more familiar re- 
past, buffoons and pantomimes are sometimes introduced, to 
divert, not to offend, the company, by their absurd jests : but 
female singers, and the soft and effeminate kinds of music are 
severely excluded ; such martial tunes as animate the soul to 
deeds of valour are alone grateful to the ear of Theodoric. 
He retires from table, and the nocturnal guards are imme- 
diately posted at the entrance of the treasury, the palace, and 
the private apartments. 



As the manners and habits of the last days of Rome in the 
West are but very obscurely known, one more letter from 
the pen of Sidonius, extended as this Volume has become in 
the necessary execution of its plan, shall be exhibited. It is 
the more curious, as shewing the habits of a bishop of the 
latter half of the fifth century of the Christian sera ; which 
bishop is one of the constellation of those great Ecclesiastics 
which are presented to us in the collection, distinguished by 
the name of Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum. It is a letter to a 
respectable correspondent of Sidonius, supposed to be a citizen 
of Arverne ; and written at the Villa of Apollinaris and Fer- 
reolus, two of his intimate friends. 



SIDONIUS TO DONPDIUS. 

You ask why, having set out on my visit so long ago to 
Nemausus, I lengthen your regret by so long an absence. I 
now give you the reasons for my delaying my return so long, 
which it gives me pleasure to relate, because I know that the 

ut causa salvetur. The discipline of the church must at this time have sat 
easy upon the clergy, for a bishop to be thus publicly engaged with the dice- 
box. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 691 

things which give me pleasure give you pleasure also. In this 
most delightful country I have passed a time of the greatest 
enjoyment with my most kind and polite friends, Ferreolus 
and Apollinaris. Their farms adjoin, and their houses are so 
near together as to be hardly far enough for a ride, though 
the distance is too fatiguing for a walk. The acclivities about 
them are laid out in vineyards, and olive-gardens ; you might 
think them to be Aracynthus and Nysa, celebrated in song. 
From one of these houses you have a prospect of an extensive 
champaigne country, from the other you look upon groves 
and plantations. But though these Villas are of a different 
character, they are equally delightful. But why enlarge upon 
the site of these Villas, when I have so much to say upon the 
kind hospitality which reigns within them. It being our first 
visit, we sent forward some very expert explorers of the way, 
who might secure our retreat, for each of these houses were 
situated not only deep in the tracks behind public embank- 
ments, but among paths, which to shorten the distance had 
been rendered intricate, and by roads leading through the 
pasture, lest we might be intercepted by the snares laid for 
us by our friends to prevent our return. Into some of their 
snares, I confess, we did in part fall, but not against our will, 
for scarcely had we got footing in the house, when we were 
compelled to take an oath that we would not think of leaving 
it to continue our journey, before the expiration of seven days 
from our arrival. On the morning of each day there was an 
agreeable contention between our hosts,, whose kitchen should 
first begin to smoke with the nice things to be prepared for 
us. Nor truly could the turns in this respect be easily settled 
upon a just scale and division, although, it is true, I was 
connected by the ties of propinquity with one family, while 
those who were with me had a similar connexion with the 
other. For on Ferreolus, a man of prsefectorian rank, in addi- 
tion to his claim of relationship, age and station seemed to 
confer the priority in exercising the rights of hospitality. 
Thus we were hurried from one luxurious entertainment to 
another. Hardly had we passed the threshold, when, be- 



692 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

hold, regular matches of tennis-players, within the rings or 
circular enclosures, and the frequent noise and rattling of the 
dice, with the clamours of the players ! In another part were 
placed such an abundance of books ready for use, that you 
might suppose yourself in the libraries of the grammarians, or 
among the benches of the Roman Athenaeum, 90 or the furni- 
ture of the shops of the booksellers. These means of enter- 
tainment were so disposed, that the books of a serious cha- 
racter were placed near the seats assigned to the matrons, 
while near the benches of masters and fathers of families, 
such compositions were ranged as were in esteem for their 
latin gravity and tragic elevation ; though these volumes, 
the productions of various writers, might all possess an 
equality of merit on subjects very different ; for men of like 
intellectual rank were mingled together; here Augustin, here 
Varro, here Horace, here Prudentius, caught the eye of the 
reader. Among whom Adamantius Origenes, as interpreted 
by Turranius Ruffinus, 91 was submitted to the inspection of 
the serious readers professing our faith ; so that the main- 
tamers of the different opinions on this subject might discuss 
the grounds upon which some of our greatest divines have 
condemned this interpretation as a very sinister performance, 
and to be altogether avoided, although it was so exact a 
translation of each word and sentence, that neither Apuleius 



90 These were the Subsellia cuneata of the Athenaeum, constructed in 
Rome, in imitation of the Greek Athenaeum, and which was the scene of the 
ludi litterarii. It seems there is yet the name of the ' school of the Greeks ' dis- 
tinguishing a small space at the foot of the Aventine hill, where tradition 
says, St. Augustin once taught, when he exercised the rhetorical art in the 
Roman Athenaeum. Tn this place also poems and orations were usually re- 
cited. Concerning the Roman Athenaeum, see Lampridius in Alexandro : 
Capitolinus in Pertinace, et Gordiano ; and Symmachus, Lib. ix. Ep. 84. 

91 The interpretation of Origen by Ruffinus, seems to be highly approved of 
by Sidonius ; which is not to be wondered at, as the Christians of Gaul and 
of all the Western Churches were much inclined to favour Ruffinus ; but Jerom, 
in commenting on Origen's work 7T£pi apx<*>v, shews that in Ruffinus's inter- 
pretation many things were interpolated, and many things subtracted, and 
he calls Ruffinus's work " infamem earn interpretationem." 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 693 

nor Tully, had more faithfully executed, the one the Phsedo of 
Plato, and the other the Ctesiphon of Demosthenes, as a rule 
and model for Roman elocution. With these studies each of 
us occupied himself as he pleased, until a messenger from the 
chief cook reminded us that it was time to think of taking 
care of our corporeal part : which messenger, marking the 
time by the Clepsydra, came very punctually at the fifth hour.9 2 
Dinner was soon dispatched, after the senatorian custom, 
according to which a copious repast is served up in few dishes, 
although the banquet consisted both of roast and boiled. 
Little stories were told while we were taking our wine, which 
conveyed delight or instruction, as they happened to be dic- 
tated by experience or gaiety. We were decorously, elegantly, 
and abundantly entertained. Rising from table, if we were 
at the Villa called Voroangum, we retired to our apartments 
to get our necessaries from our packages. If we were at 
Prusianum, the other Villa, we turned out Tonantius and his 
brothers, some very select young men of quality, of the same 
standing, to make room for us and our furniture. Having 
shaken off our after-dinner-nap, we amused ourselves with a 
short ride, to get an appetite for our supper. Neither of our 
hosts had their baths completed for use, though each was 
constructing them. But after the train of servants and atten- 
dants, which I had brought with me, had a little respite from 
their cups, whose brains were somewhat overcome with the 
hospitable bowls of which they had freely partaken, a sort of 
pit was dug in haste near a rivulet or spring, into which a 
quantity of hot bricks were thrown, a circular arbor being 
made over it by the intertexture of the boughs of willows or 
hazels, by which the place was darkened, and air at the same 

92 Eleven o'clock according to our reckoning. The day was anciently con- 
sidered as divided into twelve hours, and the night into the same number, the 
hours of the day being ab exortu solis ad occasum — i. e. from the rising to the 
setting sun, so that the hours would, for the purposes of life, vary in length. 
The sixth hour was always the period of noon : the fifth was therefore eleven 
o'clock. Quinta dum Linea tangitur umbra. Pers. Sat. iii. 1. 4. 
Sosia, Prandendum est; quartam jam totus in horam 
Sol calet, ad quintam flectitur umbra notam. Auson in Ephim. 



694 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

time admitted through the interspaces, while a hot vapour was 
sent through the willows. Here an hour or two passed in the 
midst of much wit and merriment, during which we were all 
thrown into a most salubrious perspiration, being enveloped in 
the steam as it came hissing from the water. When we had 
been suffused with this long enough, we were plunged into the 
hot water; and being well cleansed and refreshed, we were after- 
wards braced by an abundance of cold water from the river or 
fountain. The river Vuardus 93 runs between the two Villas, 
and except when it is thickened and discoloured by the influx 
from the snow on the neighbouring heights, it is a transparent 
and gentle stream, with a pebbly bottom, nor on that account 
the less abounding in delicate fish. I might go on to give 
you a description of our suppers, which were sumptuous, did 
not my paper put that stop to my loquacity, which modesty 
does not ; of which, however, I should have been much 
pleased to give you an account, were I not ashamed to blur 
over the back of my paper with my ink. Besides which, we 
are on the point of starting, and we please ourselves with the 
hope of soon seeing you again, if God permit ; and then we 
shall best commemorate the suppers we have had with our 
friends, in the suppers we shall exchange with each other, 
only let a complete week first elapse to bring us back to our 
appetites, after this luxurious banqueting; for a stomach sur- 
feited by luxurious fare, is repaired by nothing so much as by 
stinting it for a time. 



The letter last above produced presents an image of more 
ease and cheerfulness, than might have been expected to 
exist at a time when the Roman Empire was falling to pieces, 
and successive incursions of barbarous and unknown enemies 
were shaking to their foundation the elements of society. 

93 This river runs through the country of the Volcce Arecomici into the 
Rhone, once famous for a Roman bridge and aqueduct, of Roman structure, 
of which, it is said, some traces may yet be seen. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 695 

But there is a tenacity in the habits of civilized life, and an 
exigency in its usages and reciprocities, which sustain it in 
being and operation, amidst all the casualties and revolutions 
to which civilized communities are exposed, and thus in the 
last catastrophe of Rome, with Goths and Vandals, and 
Visi-Goths at her gates, and trampling on her provinces, 
we find the bishop of Arverne and his friends, at a retreat 
among the mountain passes, enjoying all the pleasures of the 
festive board, and as happy as good cheer, and hospitable 
friendship could make them. Sidonius seems, after all, to 
have been a very good-natured man, a kind friend, and a good 
husband. It has been affirmed, that in compliance with the 
prescript of the Canons, and the usages of the ancient church, 
he separated himself from Papianilla, as his wife, and adopted 
her as his sister, according to the general practice of the 
church under like circumstances. The same has also been said 
of Paulinus of Nola, — thac he turned his wife into his sister, upon 
his ordination. This statement respecting Sidonius stands upon 
no good testimony, and is very unlikely to be true : and in a 
letter of Aug;ustin addressed to Paulinus and Therasia his 
wife, their conjugal union is alluded to in terms of great praise 
and congratulation. 9* Synesius, we have seen, resolutely re- 
sisted such a shameful interdict, and the miserable and wicked 
subterfuge by which it was attempted to be compensated. 
And although both the prohibition, and the fraudulent evasion 
may have been occasionally practised in the primitive church, 
it was reserved for the discipline of a still darker age, and a 
fouler superstition to include, and give permanence to, so gross 
a regulation amongst its other tyrannical devices. 

Our review of ancient epistolary correspondence seems fitly 
to close with that epoch of ancient history, in which the majesty 
of the Empire was evanescent in Augustulus, and when Sido- 
nius Apollinaris was the only remaining assertor of the claims 
of the Latin muse. The scope of this undertaking necessarily 
brought under notice the epistles of the fathers of the church, 

94 See Supr. 595. 



696 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

particularly of those of the fourth, and the early part of the fifth 
century. In this part of the work, it is hoped that no indica- 
tion has been given of a want of that respect and reverence 
for the fathers, which their characters and services claim at 
our hands. There were many of them excellent and holy men, 
and of all the actors in the greatest affairs of mankind, there 
are none concerning whom it is more important that the truth 
should be spoken. We are indebted to them largely for their 
lessons of vital holiness, and for their general specification of 
the fundamental verities of an orthodox belief. But still 
they were very erring men, often at variance with Scripture, 
often at strife with each other, and often, very often, on parti- 
culars involving or affecting the mysteries of our faith, letting 
their fancies loose in unsober speculation. They were under 
considerable disadvantages, many of them being late converts 
to Christianity, and not becoming such, till their minds had 
been deeply impregnated with the Gentile philosophy, which 
they had not only learned, but officially taught in the schools 
of Athens, Antioch, Rome, and Alexandria. 95 

95 The question as to what epoch of ecclesiastical history we are to look, for 
the best instruction in Christian Theology, has been very differently viewed ; 
some sending us to what is called the first and purest ages of the Church, as 
nearest to the times of the Apostles, on the ground that the Primitive Chris- 
tians had better means of knowing the minds of the inspired teachers, than 
could be supplied by the greatest industry and learning, at periods more dis- 
tant from the primary sources. There may be some justness in this reasoning, 
and we may add to this side of the balance, the further consideration, that it is 
on the credit and testimony of those early Vouchers, that the authority of the 
Scripture- Canon itself does greatly depend. It is, moreover, to the practice 
and opinions of these primitive Teachers, that we are to go for the settlement 
of many of our doubts respecting the writings and institutions of the Holy 
Apostles. The miraculous and extraordinary aid vouchsafed to the infancy of the 
Church, for supporting it in its first struggles, and for sustaining its uncollected 
strength, and its deficiency of stated methods of instruction, appear to have 
been withdrawn, perhaps gradually, as its ordinary helps increased in number 
and efficiency. In the fourth and fifth centuries their room was filled to over- 
flowing by the spurious progeny of a teeming superstition, and unscrupulous 
habit of invention. That judaizing practice which we have seen so much in 
debate between Jerom and Augustin, in their animated correspondence, con- 
tinued much longer in the Church than the latter seemed to consider probable : 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLTNARIS. 697 

Happy it is for us that with the scriptures of truth lying 
before us, we are not cast, in single dependance, on the vague 
authority of human dictation, for the grounds of our hope and 
trust. Hardly had the day of the full effusion of the spirit 
passed away, before the mystery of iniquity began its work, 
and tares were sown among the wheat. It was a corrupt 
medium of much heresy and error, but still it was the medium 
of one glorious, one certain tradition, the tradition of the Bible 
itself, handed down and confirmed through a series of unbroken 
attestation. Fallible and feeble hands, unauthorised and un- 
qualified to add a syllable to the contents of the record, or to 
interpret those contents with certainty, or to furnish an article 
of belief which those contents did not comprise and promul- 
gate, were yet capable of preserving and transmitting the record 
itself. And for this tangible subject of tradition, we have 
greatly to thank them. 

In the fourth century, Christianity being then established, 

and after its ' honourable interment ' left an impression, of no favourable effect, 
in the fables and traditions to which it gave birth. To these succeeded an im- 
pure mixture of Gentile philosophy, which brought with it many taints that 
corrupted the stream of interpretation, and doctrinal teaching. It furthermore 
introduced a profusion of mystical and allegorical fictions and puerilities, in dis- 
pensing which, it would have been well if the same reserve had been exercised, 
which has been unduly applied to the divine verities of Revelation. 

Of this practice of reserve I shall venture to add, that, as far as it charac- 
terized the teaching of the early Church, it may be considered as imported from 
Pagan usage, and adopted as a justifiable policy in the initiatory instructions 
given to Catechumens. The reserve of the Pagan philosophers consisted in 
confining the privilege of initiation into the recondite doctrines of their theology, 
to such only as had been prepared by a long probationary course of discipline. 
The knowledge, such as it was, to be imparted to the disciples of Pythagoras, 
was never to be dispensed beyond the bounds of their College ; whereas the 
Great Founder of our faith " will have all men to be saved, and to come unto 
the knowledge of the truth/'* 

We have no ground for saying that the Apostles temporized in delivering 
the fundamentals of the Christian faith. If they proceeded by steps in con- 
veying instruction to their Catechumens, teaching first what was easiest to be 
comprehended, we cannot doubt but that among the first points of their in- 



1 Tim. ii. 4. 



698 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS 

had the disadvantage of being brought into too near a con- 
nexion with the remains of pagan pomp and its sensual appen- 
dages, and thus the simplicity and purity both of Christian 
doctrine and life, rapidly declined from the apostolic standard. 
In the middle, and towards the end of the fifth century, we 
may discern instances enough of the great laxity that had 
begun to prevail in the discipline of the church. Sidonius 
was a bishop as well as Basil, but compare the letters of 
Basil and Gregory in a former part of this volume, written in 
their mountain solitudes, with the baths and chambers of the 
Avitacum of Arverne : and observe the facility with which 
Avitus himself was translated from a throne to a bishoprick. 
That through such seras of darkness and ignorance, any streams 
of Christian discipline or doctrine should have run continuous 
and pure, is the boon of a most merciful Providence ; and with 
a succession of sacerdotal orders transmitted in our national 
church by sacred ceremonies and institutions, the humble 

struction were comprized those vital and essential truths, without which 
Christianity would not have been the real subject of their teaching, but some 
other Gospel. On the subject of the Divinity of Christ, Dr. Horsley has 
well explained the remarks of St. Chrysostom in his first Homily on the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, and has shewed to what subject of instruction those 
remarks were applicable. See his Tracts in controversy with Priestley, Part 2. 
Cb. 1. 

Something has appeared in a former part of this Volume, on the degree of 
allowance, and even credit, given to a certain policy of dissimulation practised 
by the ecclesiastical writers of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, under the 
name of oacovofiia or dispensatio ; and although this practice seems to have 
been principally, if not wholly, confined to the instruction of their Heathen 
Catechumens, before their conversion was sealed and completed by the rite of 
baptism ; yet even to this extent it will appear to a mind in a rectified Chris- 
tian state, as nothing less than a timid and dishonest procedure. It was asking 
men to become nominal converts, in ignorance of that to which they were to be 
converted ; to receive Christianity apart from its essentials ; and to profess a creed 
without knowing what they were to believe. It was a deceptious and menda- 
cious proceeding, though it came short of the disingenuousness of preaching to 
the baptized a mutilated Gospel. That it is due to the fathers in general to 
say that they did not carry their reserve to so dishonest and unwarrantable an 
extent, appears in the distinction taken between the two cases in the valuable 
exposition of doctrine and practice, contained in the Catechetical discourses of 
Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem. 



TO THE TIME OF SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS. 699 

Christians of our own country may surely be at ease, without 
the assurance of any personal conveyance by the imposition 
of hands of a mystical unction flowing in an uninterrupted 
channel from the fountain of original appointment. He may 
be at his ease also, without resting his assurance of the funda- 
mental doctrines of his creed on the general agreement of the 
fathers, or early divines of the church. If such agreement can 
only have its proper point of union in the written word of God, 
why not go thither at once, taking these holy men with us as 
our assistants, and using them in subservience to the Bible ? 
but in doing this, the cautious Christian will lean with a rea- 
sonable distrust on human aid. It is the jewel he wants, and 
not the casket, however adorned with emblems and devices, 
by the hand of the "cunning workman." 

It is regretted that the limits of this work have not allowed 
a larger exhibition of the letters of the ancient fathers of the 
church, as it is chiefly in their correspondence that their 
genuine opinions are found. They contain much spiritual 
wisdom and many excellent rules for the guidance of moral 
conduct ; and if some of them are a little defective in the stress 
laid on that sentence of wrath, under which humanity lies 
prostrate ; and on pardoning grace and justification through 
the blood alone of the Redeemer ; if too much of the leaven 
of the schools has found its way into them ; and if there might 
have been correcter and fuller statements of the destitution of 
the natural man, and of the moral desolation of a criminal 
world ; they nevertheless bear honourable testimony to the 
piety and faithfulness of their authors, and are among our 
most valuable repositories of doctrine and disquisition. 

But the ground of ecclesiastical history is to be trodden 
with great caution and moderation. All tampering with the 
sacred scriptures ; all limitations imposed on their complete- 
ness ; all attempted supplements to their plenary comprehen- 
siveness ; all postponement of their fundamental doctrines ; 
all distrust of their supernatural efficacy ; all reliance upon 
human authority, beyond its proper province of discipline, 
order, illustration, and exercise ; will be sure to lead to a 



700 FROM THE TIME OF LIBANIUS. 

wrong use of the valuable writings of those holy men, whom, 
with filial respect, we call our fathers, and who, while they 
are proved by their works to have been very fallible men, 
have nevertheless established by those works their title to our 
grateful homage, and a consecrated place in our bosoms. 



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FINIS. 



C. Wbittingham, Tooks Court, Chancery Lane. 




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